Japan

I never realized the benefit of writing blogs immediately after leaving a country…until now. Last night we crossed the international dateline, which means that we repeated November 22nd. So ha, I will have spent more time in 2008 than you…I think. Anyway, it was weird to go to bed one night and be 15 hours ahead of home, and then wake up the next and be 8 hours behind…but with all the clock advances and time changes on this boat, I’m getting used to it. Today on the ship was our day off, which was amazing because I got to sleep in until noon…something I don’t think I’ve done yet on this voyage. I also got to take a glorious nap in the afternoon, and then spent late afternoon with a cup of tea and a book watching the sunset (4:30pm…). Tonight was the Students of Service auction, benefiting the organization chosen by the students, Operation Hunger. Going into it we thought it was going to be stupid stuff like sweatshirts and Semester at Sea gear, but they did it up. Stays at homes were donated in Finland, Norway, Spain, Israel Nova Scotia, Napa Valley, and Malibu…to name a few. Laura Flynn, Victoria and I got so into that we decided to donate something of our own…a “weekend cultural tour of Charlottesville” for the winner and two friends. We are planning a wine tasting tour, a hike of Humpback Rock, a visit to Monticello, dining at some of Charlottesville’s great restaurants, tubing down the James River and a bar crawl down the corner. We were so nervous it would be some random person we didn’t know, but thankfully Victoria’s friend Timmy won it and is planning on bringing our two friends Rob and Eric, so it will be really fun! Anyway, enough about ship life, we left Japan 5 days ago and arrive in Hawaii in 5…I can’t wait to be on the beach in Waikiki for Thanksgiving!
Okay, so back track 5 days and let’s go to Japan. This is honestly one of the coolest, most amazing countries on the planet. I swear, I would move there in a heartbeat.

There and South Africa. We got into Japan on the 14th and I left the boat to go on my one night, two-day home stay. I was really nervous because a) I don’t speak Japanese (now much more than before, that’s for sure), b) I didn’t know if they spoke English (it turns out very little), and c) I was going alone, not with another Semester at Sea student, like most of the home stay programs had been. We got off the boat and went to meet our families. My okasa, or mother, Akiko, was super cute and had brought 3 of her friends with her to meet me! Unfortunately her kids are already in college and her husband works in Tokyo (we were in Kobe), so it would have been just the two of us otherwise. We left port and drove to Nishinomiya, her hometown, which is tucked between Osaka and Kobe. We met with three other families from the home stay organization, called the Hippo Club (still not sure why), and went to a Japanese noodle restaurant.
Luckily the other two families had little kids! My friend Amanda’s family had one little girl named Yuki, and my friend Molly’s family had little Yu, who was 3, and Suito, who was 4, both boys. After a lunch of traditional Japanese noodles, called udon, we went to visit a Shinto shrine. We walked through large orange gates, through winding paths, and approached the steps of the shrine, but before we could go in we had to wash our hands and face to cleanse ourselves.

After that we each took a coin, made a prayer and rang the bell at the entrance to the shrine. As is the deal with most Japanese shrines, there were beautiful gardens with coy ponds, turtles, egrets and lots of beautiful greenery. We spent an hour walking around the ponds, feeding the fish, and enjoying the brisk winds of fall.

(P.S. Is Yu not the most adorable boy ever?) This was the second time during the entire voyage we had seen leaves change color, which made me a little homesick for the beautiful autumns at UVA! After the shrine we spent a leisurely afternoon at a food market, where we enjoyed some interesting Japanese desserts. Apparently the Japanese are BIG fans of bean paste…um, ew. If you ever go, be careful – what appears to be chocolate, not always is; that’s just my little warning. After doing some great shopping at the 100 yen store (I got this really sweet pair of glasses that have now become my "Asian Accessory" – I literally wear them ALL the time) we perused the ginormous grocery store while our moms shopped for dinner. When we got back to Molly’s family’s house, it had turned into Molly, Molly’s mom, Akiko, Yu, Suito, and me. On the agenda for the night: homemade temaki sushi handrolls and takoyaki (octopus dumplings that sound foul but are amazing).

Our moms (seen above! my mom is on the left) created this amazing array of 8 different kinds of fish, including salmon, yellowtail, tuna, snapper, octopus, and crab. They laid out pieces of nori, or dried seaweed, a steaming bowl of sticky rice, big wads of wasabi, piles of ginger, and saucers of soy sauce. Molly and I grabbed our plates and chopsticks and had at it!

After multiple rounds of fresh and delicious sushi we had takoyaki. These dumplings are made in a special wrought iron pan with batter, onion, and diced octopus, and then are topped with a thicker, sweeter version of Worcestershire sauce, a bit of Japanese mayonnaise, flakes of nori and katsuobushi, some dried fish flakes or something. And honestly it sounds disgusting, but it was truly unbelievably awesome.

After dinner, Molly’s mom brewed us homemade green tea while we played hide and ghost seek with the kids.
Unfortunately after a while my mom and I had to leave to go to the local Hippo Club meeting, where I was shown off like a hot commodity. Since the main purpose of this group is learning about other cultures and languages, I had to introduce myself in all the languages I speak – English, French, Spanish, and my newly learned introduction in Japanese. Going around the circle, people introduced themselves in Malaysian, Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, and other random, random languages. Apparently all members of this club can hold an introductory conversation in 19 languages…no big deal. As the clock started to approach 9:30pm I felt myself become really old really fast. I was yawning up a storm and couldn’t wait to hit my tatami mat and go to sleep! Luckily Akiko realized that my brain was no longer functioning after holding conversations in 5 different languages (my tiny bit of Mandarin came into play), and we hopped in the car. As we approached her neighborhood she informed me we needed to stop at the grocery again…I took a short nap while she shopped for half an hour. After that we made about 5 more stops before we were FINALLY going home…or so I thought. As we pulled into her neighborhood around midnight she informed me we had just one more stop…and it was so worth it! We drove up to the top of her neighborhood, one of the highest in Nishinomiya, trespassed on private property and saw the coolest view ever! It was the entire span of Osaka, Kobe, and little Nishinomiya – the entire skyline of all three cities. That woke me up fast! It was gorgeous. I don’t think I got to bed until about 2:30am that morning…not my plan, but whatever. We got back to Akiko’s house where her son was watching her little cocker spaniel Leo, almost as cute as Phoebe, but not quite. Sadly her speaks less English than she does, so that conversation was a no-go. Instead I knocked out some reading in my tiny little bamboo room on my actually really comfortable tatami sleeping mat arrangement.

And to give you an idea of how great of a mom Akiko really was…she let me sleep till our late morning tea ceremony and lunch. When I got up my friend Amanda’s family, with little Yuki, came over with some of Akiko’s friends for a traditional Japanese tea ceremony and a delicious lunch of homemade okonomiyaki, a Japanese dish native to the Kansai (Osaka) region. I didn’t wake up and put on normal clothes though, oh no. I wore a bright red kimono with white designs and a yellow obi – it was awesome! They taught me how to make tea, the proper ceremonial methods for drinking it, thanking the host, etc. Mine didn’t taste too great though…oh well.
We then had some rice balls and pastries for dessert. I definitely ate too much! The end of the lunch brought the exchanging of gifts, apparently a big deal in Japanese culture. I gave Akiko tea from the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, and some great soaps from Cambodia. For her son and daughter, I got them Semester at Sea t-shirts, and for her husband, a SAS hat. In return I got some weird handkerchief and a translucent folder with trees on it haha…it was very strange, but sweet. Akiko then drove me from her house back to the ship, where we said our goodbyes and I met my friends for the next leg of my Japanese journey.
Victoria, Nora, Alki, Cara, Julien and I caught a train from the nearby Kobe station to Osaka around 5pm. I’m quite certain our hotel was in the ghetto. But luckily three other boys from the ship, Batu, Jerry, and Juan were all staying in the same place with Batu’s Japanese friend Tomoko, who was from Osaka. She was great to have! Oh, and here’s a picture of our sardine can of a bamboo room that Victoria, Cara and I shared…comfy!

So we stopped by the corner convenience store on the way to downtown Osaka, picked up some Strong Sevens, and hopped on the metro. When we arrived it looked like Times Square. The amount and brilliance of the lights was out of control…someone could seriously have a seizure.

Since there were about 14 of us at this point, we split up for dinner with plans to meet up again before Karaoke – perhaps my favorite activity of all time. Our original group of six picked out a small sushi restaurant and parked ourselves for a while, enjoying great tempura, sashimi, miso soup and sushi rolls. Finally the time came for karaoke, which was AWESOME! In these karaoke halls you rent out a room with multiple big, flat-screen TVs and the option of singing any song known to mankind. Amongst our choices, Love is a Battlefield, Hit Me With Your Best Shot (classics), some Mariah Carey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc. You get the gist. Essentially it was my jam. I love any excuse to sing!

Afterwards we followed Tomoko to some of her favorite spots in Osaka, which is actually a great city at night. Of course we stopped at Japanese McDonalds on the way home, which has come to be a common experience in all of these countries…and yes, the menus are changed! Exciting news, I know. For instance, in Japan they have some weird Ebi Filet-O, an alternate version of the Filet-O-Fish…clever. In India, they serve no beef products, as would be expected. And in South Africa corn is a staple to the McDonald’s menu. Oh, AND McDonalds is open 24 hours a day and delivers in ALL ASIAN COUNTRIES.

Why we don’t have this in the US is beyond me. So that was all super fun, but I swear sleeping in that tiny bamboo cell felt not only claustrophobic, but somewhat like a sauna as well. Fab.
We woke up the next morning, the three of us in our room is very awkward positions, left the hotel and grabbed a train to Kyoto. Once there we took another train straight to Tokyo and got in around early evening. I went to my hotel, where I was meeting Kierstin, Laura Flynn, Jen, Jess, and Christine at our room. We have sharing one double bed amongst six girls down to a science, that’s for sure! Once the girls showed up we went out to find some dinner. And what did we find? Good old TGI Friday’s. At this point I had eaten too much sushi to warrant any more for at least 24 hours and nachos, chicken wings and a Caesar salad were sounding quite amazing. And let me tell you something, they were. I have never been happier in my life to see that TGI Friday’s waiter in his striped outfit and flare.

While there we met two American baseball players (Mom, tell Tucker to read this part because I know he doesn’t) who had been playing on teams in Taiwan for the past 10 months. One had played previously for the Rockies and Padres and decided that he needed a change of pace, wanted to travel, and came to play in Asia. He said that he had been having a great time…the sport seems to be growing out of control in this area. Stadiums are popping up like Starbucks – all over the joint. Sunday nights are typically slow in Tokyo, but the Rapponggi district was full of Semester at Sea students and other tourists, so there was a good deal open.

Honestly though, I’ve never felt more hassled in my life to enter clubs. Kierstin and I started pretending that we only spoke French to escape these people and what happens? They find the one person on their staff that speaks French as well…so no dice there. It has become a general fallback method, however.
The next morning we got up and went out to explore Tokyo. We had an AMAZING lunch of fresh sushi, prepared right in front of us, and headed to the Harajuku district.

If any of you are Gwen Stefani fans, you know what I’m talking about. I have never seen weirder clothes or hairstyles in one concentrated place in my life. Whoa. But the area was very trendy and there was some great shopping. I can now dress as a full Asian – that is quite exciting. After a good afternoon in Harajuku we came back, and my friends headed to The Who concert. Not something I was totally interested in, and I was glad that I had spent the afternoon in Harajuku rather than in line for three hours getting tickets…Anyway, while they went to the concert I met up with my guy friends from Stanford and we grabbed dinner at a real Mongolian barbeque. It was so delicious.

They bring you all kinds of chicken, steak, random beef cuts, vegetables, noodles, etc. to cook on the grill set up in the middle of your table. I even ate cow tongue. YUM! That’s my adventurous food choice (along with octopus) for Japan. Afterwards we headed to the Absolut Ice Bar Tokyo, probably one of the coolest (pun intended) bars I have ever been to. Before you walk in they make you put on this giant silver parka with a fur hood and attached gloves. Once inside you understand why. IT IS FREEZING! Everything, and I mean everything, is made out of ice – the floor, ceiling, walls, chairs, tables, the bar itself, even the cups. Take a look at this picture, and you will understand.

I also just loved the parkas, I sort of wanted to steal one. The bar is so cold that you can only stay in for 45 minutes, and that’s definitely a good thing because I was starting to freeze my patootie off.

So we left, made our to Rapponggi district, and found tons of Semester at Sea kids crowding the streets. Okay, and I’ll put it this way – Tokyo’s nightlife is unreal. It cannot even be described it is so fun! The whole city is like New York on steroids.
The afternoon we had to make our way back to the ship, which took a little bit longer than the expected half an hour. 3 hours later Jess, Christine and I arrived in Yokohama, our port, and boarded the ship. Driving through Yokohama was way cute though; it looked like a little Bethesda, Maryland or something. Lots of people just walking around enjoying the beautiful fall day.So this blog took me a little time to get out, but I figured I had time. It’s actually more fun this way because I get to relive every moment of being in each country way after it’s actually over. I can’t believe we are going to be done in 3 weeks. I’m not ready. I don’t want to go home yet, I’m no where near being ready for that. And family – don’t get me wrong, I miss you tons, I do, but I don’t want to leave my friends, the ship, this awesome family that I’ve made while being away. Each and every experience has been amazing and has taught me something not only about each place I have visited, but also about who I am. I totally believe in this whole “changed” aspect of study abroad with Semester at Sea. This has changed how I view the world, how I live my life day-to-day, and what I plan to do when I graduate. I just feel obligated to help in any way that I can. Whether than be the Peace Corps, Operation Hunger, or something else, I’m not sure yet, but I’m eager to find out.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Enjoy being together with your family and friends. Mom, Dad, Frank, Amy, Jeremy, Tucker, I wish I could be there with you all! Cheers a glass at dinner for me :) I might be somewhere along the beach in Waikiki…

Hong Kong and China

The first thing I thought when I got off the boat in Hong Kong and entered the giant shopping mall right off the gangway was “Welcome to 1.3 billion people”. I have never been so crowded anywhere in my life! The subway in Shanghai, Tiananmen Square in Beijing, shopping in Hong Kong…lots and lots of Chinese people! When we got off the boat in Hong Kong we took the Star Ferry over to the island from where we were docked in Kowloon.

Jess, Diego, Gabriel (both from Mexico…they have the coolest accents), and I walked around a bit and then made our way up to the famous site of Hong Kong: Victoria Peak.

We took the tram up the practically vertical hill, after posing with Madam Tussaud’s Jackie Chan statue, and when we reached the top it was one of the coolest views of a city I have ever seen. You could literally see EVERYTHING! The entire city was sprawling out before us; we could even see our ship! It was awesome to see Hong Kong draped in a hazy fog with the sun barely peaking through the clouds. On the other side of the peak was a beautiful bay with the setting sun reflecting on its surface…a beautiful place to spend our first afternoon in China!

The peak was interesting…a lot of touristy things, including China’s installment of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant! I just had to buy a tshirt…anywho we descended from the peak after happy hour, and went back to boat to change before heading out. We got to see the beautiful Hong Kong light show, put on every night around 8pm, before going to Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong’s restaurant and bar district.

The main streets of the district were crazy with lights and tons of people running around. We bought light-up sunglasses and bunny ears, being sold by the hundreds on the streets, and headed to Agave, a Mexican restaurant and tequila bar, so Diego and Gabe could have a taste of home!

We had all been missing guac like nobody’s business so having authentic chips, salsa and guac, nachos and quesadillas was AMAZING!! Diego took a bite and said he felt like he was home! All of Semester at Sea was essentially out on the two main streets of Lan Kwai Fong so it was fun to walk around and hang around outside the bars along the cobblestone streets and in nearby parks.

After experiencing Hong Kong’s seemingly never-ending nightlife, we spent the next day doing a little shopping (we bought some very cool, very Asian, panda hats), finding a hotel (eventually staying at “Mingle Place”, I kid you not), and enjoying the fact that our six best girlfriends were traveling all together for the first time! We had all done small groups or individual stuff with one another, but we had not been all together at the same time before, so that was really fun! We went out to a girls’ dinner and roamed around Lan Kwai Fong for our last night in Hong Kong.

Side note, some of the Loyola kids we had hung out with in Malaysia happened to be in Hong Kong that night and I ran into them in the streets! Random…
Getting to the airport at 6:00am for our 8:00am flight to Beijing was a little bit of a struggle, but we made it in plenty of time, totally unsuspecting of the news we were about to get and the blow our entire shipboard community would receive. Apparently the night before, a boy on our voyage named Kurt had been struck and killed by a drunk driver in Hong Kong. When we arrived at the gate for our flight all of the other Semester at Sea kids there were either crying, too shocked to comprehend, and staring at their computer screens trying to read our ship’s press release. Although I didn’t personally know Kurt well, his death hits close to home. He lived on my hall, he was in the cultural ambassadors club with me, he was Brad’s workout buddy. It’s hard to fathom that we’ve lost a fellow student, a member of this big, traveling family, and at this point everyone is trying to cope, continue to enjoy our journey, while keeping in mind how vulnerable we really are.
After a plane ride from hell (Kierstin decided to drape herself ALL OVER me and Jess and kicked me in the head in her sleep a few times…) we arrived in FREEZING COLD Beijing!

However, transportation from the airport was not as easy as we had thought…no taxis…and no one that worked there spoke English, a factor that became a very common thread in our travels. We eventually found a nice man who spoke English and he directed us towards the bus that would take us downtown to Tiananmen Square. After taking the bus we had to find a cab (not easy to hail because the drivers don’t ever want to stop and pick you up, and if they do they rarely take you all the way to where you want to go!), and get to our hotel, perhaps the strangest place I have ever stayed in my life. We found numerous random pairs of shoes around the room – on the bedside table, next to the door, etc. It was bizarre. We left the hotel to try to get to the Forbidden City before it closed, but no dice. Luckily we ran into a man named Paul, who helped us organize a tour for the rest of the afternoon and the next day. He took us down to the Temple of Heaven, maybe one of the coolest spots in Beijing. In the park that surrounds the temple many locals come to play cards, sing, dance, perform tai chi, picnic, see friends, and just hang out. It was a great taste of local culture. The temple itself is amazing, and it was especially cool for me to see since I had studied it in Chinese art class at UVA.

The temple was where the emperor came three times a year to make sacrifices and pray for a good harvest. After the temple we crossed the street to the nearby pearl market where saltwater and freshwater pearls are available for unbelievably great prices….we’re talking $20 for a Tahitian saltwater black pearl necklace. China was cheappppp! We left the pearl market, raced back to the hotel to change, and headed out to experience a big piece of Chinese culture – an acrobatics show. And it was weird. Really weird. Some spinning plates, other juggling extravaganzas and some cool flippy things.
Lots of balancing other people in precarious positions on seemingly weak parts of the body. And surprisingly they messed up quite a lot…clearly lots of work to do before they can go to the Olympics!
After the show our interesting adventure began. In case you all were wondering, I can now speak Mandarin, a few phrases at least. We hopped in a cab, and tried to tell the driver where to go, meaning I tried to sound out the name of a restaurant. No luck. Hm…so since not a single cab driver in all of Beijing (or Shanghai for that matter) speaks English I set to work in my handy phrase book trying to find some way to communicate to this man where we needed to go. For a quite hilarious thirty minutes, I threw out random phrases at this man such as “dinner”, “food”, “chopsticks”…finally he understood what I wanted, so I repeated the name of the restaurant and the street name and we were on our way! When he figured it out my reaction was to say “perfect!” pretty emphatically, which by the driver in my tone of voice – he thought it was hilarious. I told him what it meant (henhao), and he was super excited to have learned some English. So I decided that since I has had so much fun communicating with him, I would try some more. So I threw out “children?”, “son?”, “daughter?”, etc. and waited for a response…none of which I understood. I wish someone had it on video, it maybe was the funniest semi-conversation I’ve ever had. The restaurant ended up being in a very remote/random area of Beijing, and no one inside spoke English. Wine was extremely hard to come by (as was the check). Finally we figured everything out and were off. Kierstin wanted to stop at the Intercontinental Hotel on the way back to our own hotel so she could use a proper bathroom…everywhere we had been that day had been holes in the ground, per usual Asia. I swear each one of us wanted to sleep in the bathroom of the Intercontinental is was SO much nicer than our hotel! We stole their rolls of toilet paper.
The next morning we woke up early to start our full-day tour of Beijing and the Great Wall!! We met our guide, Sunny, who was this adorable 26-year-old girl from Beijing, and headed out into winter. It was quite a shock since we had just come from humid Vietnam and Malaysia. She took us to Tiananmen Square, explained about the statue in the middle, talked about all the surrounding buildings, the most interesting of which houses Mao’s embalmed body.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to see the body, and we headed over to the Forbidden City, by far the coolest thing. The city itself is huge! There are so many different buildings, gateways, gardens, statues, etc. We walked through the main gateway and over one of the five bridges that span the encircling moat. Naturally we posed for a picture with the giant Mao poster.

We walked through the numerous gates, all whose names are running together in my head because they essentially sound/mean the same thing. Gate of Harmony, Gate of Middle Harmony, Gate of Supreme Harmony…something along those lines. The buildings have been beautifully restored and the red, gold, blue, and decoration just popped! All the buildings were red with a gold roof, the colors of the emperor. We saw where the emperor performed important ceremonies, where his concubines lived, where his eunuchs lived, where the empress lived, where the bridal ceremonies took place, where the emperor took naps, you name it, we saw it.
Boy had a room for everything. We ended in a beautiful garden with some of the oldest trees on earth, literally. So that was way cool. We left the Forbidden City and started to make our way towards the Great Wall, about an hour and a half away. We stopped at a silk factory on the way, where we got to try to pull the silk fibers and make them into sheets…we were awful! Then we stopped at a jade factory, where we got to learn about the entire extraction and production processes of jade objects and jewelry.
Finally THE GREAT WALL!! Oh my god. I can’t even explain how cool it was. We went to the Mutianyu section, took a chairlift up the steepest mountain of life, and landed on the wall. The sign we read said that this section of the wall is built on a 1,000m-high mountain range (hence the chair lift), some of the sections laid out on cliffs! The wall was meant to look like a flying dragon as it snaked across the mountain peaks.

We commenced the climb up the wall, and it literally is a CLIMB! By the time Jess and I got to the top (lazy bones Kierstin and Laura Flynn stopped halfway up), we were sweating bullets, but were euphoric. It was by far one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. Since we’ve missed out on most of fall along our voyage we were so excited to see the leaves change color in China. Red, green, orange, and yellow trees enveloped the Wall and covered the mountains. The air was fresh and brisk, it reminded me of why I love fall so much. So there’s not really much else to say about the wall. It was beautiful and awesome and incredible.

They also had the coolest way to get down instead of the chair lift….a toboggan. Probably the most awesome ride ever. P.S. Isn’t it weird that I’ve seen 2 of the 7 wonders of the world on this trip? Pretty exciting!
We left the wall and made our way back to Beijing to see the Olympic stadiums, including the bird’s nest and the water cube. For someone that was so absolutely addicted to the Olympics while they were on, and my parents can both attest to that, it was such an awesome experience to see those venues!

We took some quick pictures and headed off to our last stop in Beijing, a small teahouse where we got to do a tea-tasting of authentic Chinese teas…then it was off to the airport!
Our flight was delayed so we arrived in Shanghai a little later than expected, but we checked into our hostel, which was great because it was like a camp cabin. It had 3 sets of bunk beds complete with fans, hooks for clothes, lockers, a Western-style toilet (yay!), and a somewhat normal shower. These were big plusses compared to previous hotels and my hostel in Malaysia…wow. We headed out to the Bund, the famous collection of old 1920s era buildings (mostly old banks, but with lots of restaurants, clubs, and bars in there as well), that flank the river separating Pudong from the rest of Shanghai. On the other side of the river was the famous Shanghai city skyline complete with the Pearl Tower (the one with lots of randomly places spheres) and some building that looks like a bottle-opener. Take a look.
Shanghai is fully of swanky restaurants and even swankier bars and clubs with overpriced drinks and even more overpriced appetizers, but I guess that’s the way it goes in one of Asia’s most modern and developing cities.
The next day we left the hostel in order to meet the ship so we could drop our stuff before heading out for the day…only, when we got to where the ship was supposed to be…it wasn’t. Apparently while sailing from Hong Kong to Shanghai the boat encountered 15-18ft swells, the worst weather it had seen on the voyage. Thank god I wasn’t there! Anywho, I decided not to wait around, called my good friend Maggie from UVA who is studying abroad in Shanghai, and met her for lunch. It was SO NICE to see a friend from school, just a little reminder of home! I hadn’t seen Maggie since May, so it was awesome to catch up. She is doing great and LOVES Shanghai! She’s studying at a university in northern Shanghai (Fundong, I think), and has one roommate from Duke, the other is Chinese. Before going she didn’t speak a single word of Chinese, she had never taken a class. Now that she’s been there since June…she speaks it really well! I was so impressed! It was nice to go around town with her, I felt so much more confident I would arrive at where I needed to be…other times, you could never be too sure! So Maggie and I ate lunch at a cute little American restaurant, which was awesome because I had been craving a salad! China only likes fast food and fried food (dumplings, spring rolls, etc), which is good for some time and then your body starts to hate you. We grabbed a cab back to the ship so she could see my home, I dropped my stuff, and we were off for the night.

First we headed to Cloud Nine, the so-called “highest bar in Asia”. It is on the 87th floor of the Jing Mao building and gives you the most awesome view of the entire city of Shanghai. Like Victoria Peak for Hong Kong, but instead of looking out over the city from afar, you are right in the middle. It was really cool to see all the buildings light up at night. We left Cloud Nine and headed to Face Bar, a restaurant set in an old colonial style home in the French Concession district. It is actually a converted opium den from colonial times, complete with beds and lounges. It was some great Thai food too! Then we went back to Maggie’s apartment so I could see where she lived, meet her roommates, and call my mom to let her know I was alive. Then out again to Barbarossa, an interesting little Mediterranean place set in the middle of a lake in the middle of a park, only accessible by bridges. Our final destination, after our wonderful romantic evening of just us two, was Bar Rouge, to meet up with Victoria so we could have our three Theta sisters together! Woop Woop! That was really fun!

The next morning Maggie and I left her apartment and while she got coffee I perused the DVD store. 20 DVDs for $1 each…doesn’t get much better than that! I think Maggie thought I was going to buy the whole store…oops. Then we headed to the Yu Gardens and Bazaar, down in Old Shanghai. It was some of the coolest, most authentic Chinese architecture that I have seen! The buildings were white with black roofs, all overhanging, decorated with large Chinese characters in gold. In the middle of a large pond was a two-story teahouse, only accessible by sharp-angled bridges, which Maggie told me are to ward away evil spirits since they can’t turn corners…

We decided to grab lunch in this little hole-in-the-wall dim sum restaurant, and that was an interesting experience. There was no menu, it was one of those types of places that if you didn’t speak Mandarin, you didn’t eat there. There were items written in characters on plaques above the cash register with a price, and that was it. I had no idea what she was ordering for me! The other interesting part of this lunch was that it was communal seating…you sit anywhere there’s an open seat. So we ate lunch with three old Chinese women…in slight silence since they didn’t speak English (really no one in China does), and clearly my phrases “Do you speak English?” and “my name is Sarah” in Mandarin were not sufficient! But the dumplings. Oh my lord they were SO GOOD. Steamed soup dumplings. Yummmmmmy! My appetite was a little thrown off though by the way my Chinese tablemates were eating. Rules/manners/grace of any kind does not exist at the Chinese table. They eat with their heads practically in the bowl, shoveling as much food as they can into their mouths as quickly as they can, like someone’s gonna steal it! I contemplated doing it just to gage reactions. After lunch we walked around Shanghai some more, along the Bund and the river, until it was time for me to hop in a cab and head back to the ship…if any cab driver understood how to get me there!
All three of the cities I saw in China were amazing! They each had their own bit of character, something different. Hong Kong is definitely the New York, Beijing is more filled with culture and history, and Shanghai is the city that looks on the verge of the space age. Overall I loved the city of Beijing the most because there was so much to do and experience. The Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, the zoo, the pearl market, the night markets, the Great Wall – this list goes on! I will definitely find my way back somehow, there’s still so much left to see! However my experience in Shanghai was one-of-a-kind because I got to share it with someone from home. It was easy, comfortable, a nice change of pace, and just fun to be around a friend I had known longer than 2 months! Maggie really made Shanghai great for me!
We get into Japan tomorrow and this is the port that I am probably looking forward to the most! I watched Memoirs of a Geisha yesterday in preparation….

Vietnam and Cambodia

I had pretty high expectations coming into Vietnam and Cambodia – they were the two countries on our itinerary that I was most excited about going to. I think part of it is because of the movie Indochine. And if any of you reading this have seen it, you’d know exactly why. Anyway, this port exceeded all my expectations. I have never experienced such a range of emotions in one place. I have never laughed so hard, been so moved to tears, been as awed by natural and architectural beauty, or felt so welcomed in another place so far from home. We pulled into Ho Chi Minh City around noon last Thursday, after having spent a lazier-than-usual morning cruising up the Mekong River (at high tide) to get into the port. Kierstin, Danny, Ryan, Jen and I got off the boat for our one o’clock FDP visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels, and the first thing we saw was a group of beautiful Vietnamese women wearing long, colorful dresses, each one topped by one of the traditional straw hats you’d normally see dot the rows in the rice paddy. They held a giant banner that said WELCOME TO VIETNAM SEMESTER AT SEA!, and it was the first welcome of that caliber we’d ever received.

As we boarded the busses for the ride to the Cu Chi Tunnels, I wasn’t really aware of what I was in store for. We stopped first at a huge cemetery called the graveyard of 10,000 soldiers, not too far outside of Ho Chi Minh. Only 30% of the tombs had actually bodies buried beneath them, but each one had the name of a Vietnamese soldier who died or “went missing” during the war. Towards the front of the cemetery there was a larger-than-life statue of a Vietnamese mother holding the slain body of her son, a fallen soldier.

It reminded me very much of the Pietá, and to me it communicated much of the same message.
After the cemetery we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels, the system of underground tunnels the Viet Cong used to undermine American military efforts throughout the country. As our guide took us through the complex we saw the camouflaged entrance holes to the tunnels, almost exactly the size of my Macbook laptop, I kid you not. One of the tiniest, skinniest girls on our tour tried to fit into the tunnel, and even she had trouble. Apparently, in order to be in the Vietnamese army during the time, men had to weight under 50kg (I think that’s under 100lbs, not sure though) and could not exceed some absurdly small height limit as well. We saw the traps the Vietnamese army laid in the ground to nab American soldiers, ones that had actually been in use during the war. One of them was a VERY well camouflaged door-type deal that when you stepped on it, you fell through and were pierced through your entire body with giant needles poking up from the ground (maybe 3ft high). That was scary, considering I thought it was the entrance and almost stepped on it (I’m an idiot), before our guide restrained me…oops. We saw all of the other weapons, traps, and tanks used in the war, what the soldiers wore (their shoes were made out of Goodyear tires), women’s involvement in the war, etc. We then reached the firing range. I had heard the guns go off multiple times during the tour, but I wasn’t really aware of the fact that firing actual AK47s from the Vietnam War was a possibility on this tour. As Jen, Kierstin and I divvied up our bullets and put on our earmuffs, my palms started to sweat a little!

When it was my turn to shoot, I grabbed the gun (I had help with how to hold it), placed the butt against my shoulder and fired. It was the strangest feeling I have ever had. I was exhilarated, but at the same time, I remembered that this was one of the actual guns used and fired during the Vietnam War, perhaps the most devastating war of the century, and I was disgusted with myself. Over 5 million people from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the United States died during the war. The United States dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all of the bombs dropped by every country in World War II combined, in one fourth of the territory. That’s something to think about. After the shooting range we actually got to crawl through the tunnels, and oh my goodness I am claustrophobic! But I went down anyway and Jen had to coach me through the 300 meters of intense hyperventilation! It was TINY DOWN THERE! You had to crouch down, nearly bent over double, and sort of shuffle through a tiny tunnel with no way out for a LONG time. And, to make matters worse for those little Vietnamese men, for whom I’m sure it was a piece of cake because they’re probably half my size anyway, the tunnels were 40% SMALLER during the war than they are now. Holy I would be dying! Here's me in the tiniest space of my life...
The next day as we visited the War Remnants Museum, I was continually astonished and horrified by all the facts, figures, personal stories, and especially the photographs displayed around the museum. The smiling, bubbly disposition that I normally have quickly changed as I walked through that museum. I honestly have never been so moved by something in my life. By the end I had tears streaming down my cheeks as I stared at the many of faces of those women, men, and children slaughtered during the war. And after reading about the effects of Agent Orange, and experiencing a population still feeling the repercussions of that horror, I was never more ashamed of the United States in my life.

As I looked at the weapons exhibit I stared at the AK47s, still remembering how it felt in my hands, and I can’t really describe how I felt. Sad, upset, sickened, doesn’t really touch on it. Just tonight we had a panel of faculty, staff, and lifelong learners who were alive during the war share their experiences with anyone interested in listening. Some were faculty members at universities, some were students, some lost friends and family in the war, some were anti-war radicals, some were an inch away from being drafted, and just one was a veteran. As he told his story, tears pouring down his face, I couldn’t help but cry myself, one more time. It was amazing listening to him speak, and knowing that I will never be able to fully understand what that generation went through makes the whole thing all the more incomprehensible.
Breather.
Okay so now on to lighter topics. After the museum, Kierstin, Jess and I went to the Benh Thanh Market, the largest everything-in-the-world-you-could-ever-want market I have ever seen. You name it, they sold it. We picked out bracelets, paintings, DVDs, t-shirts, fabrics, and everything was SO CHEAP! I think this is where everyone spent unnecessary amounts of money. We got off the boat and found out that with the exchange rate against the dong, we were millionaires two times over with 120 American dollars. The boys threw out lots of dong jokes, too. “I have lots of dong” was quite the common phrase, haha. We found a tailor that my friend Sydney had recommended close to the market, gave them the fabrics, and I had two custom-made dresses made to fit my body for $20. TWO DRESSES. That was nuts. We explored the night markets; the hawker stalls, and ate some dank Vietnamese food. I have had my fair share of noodles, steamed rice, vegetables, spring rolls, and chicken. Yum.
The first night in Vietnam was very fun. All of our friends went out to a great dinner, where the Vietnamese waitress, who was the cutest thing ever, told me she thinks I look like Drew Barrymore. We tipped her well! All of our friends ended up at the same terrace club, so we had a great time.
The second night we experienced more of what Ho Chi Minh is like on a (somewhat) regular night. Apparently the police like to randomly come out to bars and clubs on Friday nights and shut them down. We stopped at 5 different places that were getting shut down by the police (meaning they either weren’t letting foreigners in, or they were forcing everybody out), before we met up with some local Vietnamese who showed us the place to go. The two Vietnamese boys, as it turns out, were actually born in the US, studied there, and came back to Vietnam to live after college. They were with a beautiful Brazilian girl, Izabelli, who happened to be an international model. They took us to one of their favorite local spots, Q Bar, which was verrrrrry interesting on Halloween night. But that’s another story. The favored mode of transportation in Ho Chi Minh in motorbike, so when we left, we each hopped on our own motorbike and rode back to the ship.

However, Kierstin decided she did not want to night to end there, so we all paid our drivers to take us on a tour of the city by night, which was actually awesome! We definitely got the insiders view of all the monuments and famous sites around the city.

The next morning Jess and I woke up and packed to leave for Cambodia. We flew into Phnom Penh that afternoon, and drove straight to the National Museum, full of Buddhist and Hindu artifacts. After the museum we boarded big boats to sail down the Mekong River at sunset. This one's along the river before the sun went down.

As the sun went down the city began to light up, and we could see the Royal Palace (where the king lives) highlighted against the city skyline. After our lazy river cruise, our guides had planned for us to stop at the Palm Tree Orphanage, opened by two Semester at Sea alum from many years ago. We didn’t know this at the time, but the orphans were all, in one way of another victims of the Cambodian genocide lead by the Khmer Rouge. While the Khmer Rouge was removed from power in 1979, they still operated as a resistance movement well into the 1990s, and continued their brutal massacres of the Cambodian people. Many of these kids’ parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and other relatives had been killed by the Khmer Rouge, and were taken in by the orphanage because there was no one left alive to take care of them. One of the saddest parts was the story I heard from a girl I met named Srysat, who was 18 years old and from a small village far outside of Phnom Penh. She told me that the Khmer Rouge killed both of her parents and her three older brothers. To this day she still does not know why or where their bodies are buried. Our tour guide for the Phnom Penh portion of our tour, Sakha, told me that he felt lucky that only his brother and parents had been killed because he knew many others who had lost all of their family. He felt fortunate he had escaped with “so little loss”. These stories were just astonishing.
We arrived at the orphanage with more goodies than we knew what to do with. I spent $50 at a local bookstore, which is a lot in Cambodia, on masks, party hats, coloring books, crayons, markets, paints, silly string, paper, colored pencils, balloons, books, and all sorts of other things. When we arrived you would have thought it was Christmas! They were so happy to see us, so welcoming, and so eager to play! With all the masks and party hats it looked like their own Halloween! This was the third orphanage/school experience that I have had on this trip and I am just sorry that I haven’t done more.
These kids have been through so much, much more than any of us will experience in a lifetime, and they are still so happy, so eager to learn, so grateful to have any opportunity thrown their way. They make me appreciate what I have so much more, and they have an inexplicable capacity to put a genuine smile on my face like nothing else I’ve ever really experienced.
The next day we took a tour of the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda in the morning. This is where the Cambodian king comes to stay when he is in town. It is also where his coronation takes place, and other important ceremonies in Cambodia’s capital city.

The palatial complex was huge! So many different buildings, pagodas, gardens, temples, and statues – most of it covered in gold. In the Silver Pagoda, called so because the floor is made out of actual silver (each tile weighs 1kg), there was a statue of Buddha made out of pure 24 karat gold, and adorned with over 9, 584 diamonds. The largest diamond, on the Buddha’s forehead, is probably about half the size of my palm.
We left the Royal Palace and drove to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum building was originally a school, but when the Khmer Rouge took over, the stopped all education, so the building was used as Security Prison 21 (S-21), one of the most notorious torture prisons in Cambodia. All of the torture devices used were still in place, as well as the cells where prisoners were kept in detention before being taken to the Killing Fields to be murdered. In one of the buildings pictures of all the prisoners taken there (each one had to be documented upon entering) were up on the walls and large boards on wheels.

They put 10 of these picture boards in each room, with over 100 pictures per board. There were 3 stories to the building, about 8 rooms per floor. You do the math. About 2 million Cambodians were killed during the Khmer Rouge genocide. Men, women, children, teachers, intellectuals, government officials, essential anyone they believed to impede their goals (and their families). Prisoners could be detained as little as 2 days up to 2 months before being taken to the Killing Fields to be exterminated. In the museum there were large boards on the walls detailing the hundreds of different mass graves that were found, where they were located, and how many people they found inside them. Some had over 50,000. After the museum we went straight to the actual Killing Fields, and that was pretty disturbing.

The sites where the mass graves had been weren’t even marked because there were so many. They were just giant holes in the ground covered over with grass. There was a specific tree located next to a mass grave that our guide said was used specifically to kill children. They would swing their head against the tree until they died. The women were raped and murdered, with their husbands watching, and then they cut the men’s heads off. It was pretty horrific stuff. In the center of the fields there is a large white monument that as you approach, you can see is stacked floor-to-ceiling with the skulls of many of the victims buried at the Killing Fields. Underneath the skulls is a big pile of the clothes and other personal items of the victims found at the site. There is incense burning as you enter the glass doors, flowers strewn all over the steps, and signs of peace left by the many Cambodian schoolchildren who have since come to visit. Our guide explained that for many of them these offerings are, in a way, offerings to the spirits of their parents, who may or may not have been buried there, but they have no idea. They may be staring at the skull of their mom or dad when they enter, but they will never know.

So I wouldn’t exactly say that Phnom Penh was fun, but it was certainly moving, educational, and deeply sad. After the Killing Fields we drove to the airport to take our flight to Siem Reap. We arrived at sunset and drove straight to Angkor Wat, one of the temples built by the Khmer Empire somewhere between the 9th and 15th centuries. It’s most likely the postcard someone will send you when they go to Cambodia because it’s the most famous one. The sunset was absolutely beautiful, as they have been every night on this voyage. The sky just lights up in beautiful yellows, pinks, reds, blues, greens, and oranges – it literally looks like it is on fire, it is the coolest, most beautiful thing. This is my friend Josh's picture, but it was just so awesome I had to steal it!
Oh, and here's what Angkor Wat looks like in the day...also Josh's!

We walked around the temple a little bit, which was huge, before making our way to dinner and a cultural performance. On the way out though, the COOLEST thing happened. We ran into this very tame, actually quite sweet monkey that was roaming around outside the temple. He was actually so calm that he left people pet him! I got some great pictures really up close because he literally was within arms’ reach. God, I love monkeys!
Anywho, after dinner we went to the hotel before going out to experience Siem Reap by night, which we were told is the most amazing city in Cambodia by many people we had met. Two French guys we had met in Ho Chi Minh said it is one of their favorite cities in Asia. The two clubs in the city, named Angkor What? and Temple (clever, clever), were crawling with visiting foreigners. Angkor What? was awesome, and decorated all over the walls with writing of people who had visited before. We grabbed markers and each signed our names as big as we could on the wall. My name was spray painted big as day on the staircase too, so that was pretty awesome. Anyway, Siem Reap was really, really fun and we met some cool people. We ended up a local club where we realized that Cambodians really do like to dance, hahah it was quite an interesting sight.
The next morning we woke up early to visit Angkor Thom complex, the ancient city of the Khmer Empire.

We walked through the South Gate of Angkor Thom, which was ginormous, and had the four faces of Buddha carved around the sides, representing the all-seeing eye of Buddha, who sees in all four directions.

We arrived at the center of the city, where the king Jayavarman built his official state temple, Bayon. The temple is carved in high relief, with depictions of historical events, everyday life, mythological events, and over 200 faces of the bodhisattva of compassion, Lockesvara. The temple was really sweet, but the coolest part was how we got our tour. Via elephant, no big deal. It was awesome! Lots of Dumbos hanging around that joint. We got to feed them bananas which was so weird! Their trunks are honestly the most bizarre looking things I have ever seen!

Some girl thought it would be really funny if I stuck the banana in my teeth, so that it was sticking out towards the elephant, and tried to feed it that way. So naturally, I did, and without touching my mouth/facial area (ew), he grabbed it out of my mouth! Haha it was awesome! So the elephant ride was great, and the temple was pretty neat as well.

After Bayon, we went to see the Elephant Terrace, which was a big grass thing with lots of elephants carved around it…that’s about it! But the next part was SO COOL. We went to this part of the temple complex called Baphuon, which is still in the middle of the jungle, and has not yet been restored. As it turns out, this is the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed, how cool is that? Anyway, it’s a tumbling down and all the stones are loose and stuff, so it looks kind of like Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sweet. We got to climb all around in it, wherever we wanted to go, in hidden passageways, over tumbling building rocks, just all over! My friend Colby and I slightly reenacted the TV show, no big deal…I always wanted to go on it and be a Blue Barracuda…hahaha. Hm.

Alright so the Tomb Raider temple was awesome and it was built into the actual environment so that it looked liked trees were growing out of it! The roots of these hundred foot trees branched over the entire temple and they looked like snakes or vines they way they curled and wound their way around the stonework.

On the way back to the bus we sped-walked through screaming throngs of children trying to sell us their goods. Turns out “Lady, lady 3 for 1 dolla! Just 1 dolla!” is not such a good selling tactic when it looks like what you should be selling is worth about 50 cents….oh well.
So we left Cambodia after two full days of intense sightseeing, educational activities, and lots of fun! We got back to Vietnam half an hour before on-ship time, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say we were all sad to go! Not only were Vietnam and Cambodia SO MUCH FUN, they were beautiful countries with rich cultural histories. Because of the US’s involvement in both Vietnam and Cambodia (as much as they deny entering Cambodia) during the war, I think it was especially moving for me, as an American, to experience now the repercussions of our country’s actions. For everything we did, it is astonishing to me that as a large group of Americans were warmly welcomed into both Vietnam and Cambodia with open arms and open hearts. They truly are kind, generous, and clearly forgiving people. I will definitely miss flying down the streets of Ho Chi Minh city on a motorbike, passing by seemingly endless numbers of those triangle straw rice paddy hats…but I can’t really complain, can I? Hong Kong TOMORROW!