Same Same...But Different

Getting to Viet Nam only took a day to get to from Singapore, which was a good thing seeing as I really am not a fan of being on this ship. I was excited to get to Ho Chi Minh City, there was a lot to do and see, and I was ready for it. Viet Nam was also the first communist country I’ve been too, but it didn’t feel like that on the streets.  Getting off of the boat was simple, the city was right there, and there was plenty of transportation to be found. The first day Joann, Julia, and I set out and immediately got some food at a small restaurant, with a limited selection of snake heads, frog, chickens feet, and eel. Needless to say I got plain rice that I ate with chili sauce. It was good but it made me worried to think that this is what I had to look forward to eat for five days!

In Viet Nam, the popular method of getting around is on the back of a little motorcycle. You just hop on the back of one and they take you anywhere you need to go for about a dollar…or if you’re a local, less. We took a bunch of photos while we were driving around on the motorcycles and it was a blast. After lunch we went looking for some DVD’s as we heard they were cheap in Viet Nam…and if you don’t go to the first place the motorcycle people bring you, they aren’t. What SAS and the guidebooks don’t tell you is that most of the taxi drivers have deals with local shops and will set you up. Fool me once…and then I learn. We got jipped at the DVD store the first time, but made up for it the second and third DVD places we went to.

After the DVD store, we went to Hong Kong Market, a large market with several floors all basically selling clothes and cosmetics. Once again, to get things you have to bargain effectively because if you don’t then you will get ripped off.  After the market we explored a little before going back the ship and getting ready for dinner and to go out. Joann left to be with her boyfriend who had come to visit her from Hawaii. Julia and I went out for dinner at a pizza place and then out to people watch at a place call GO2 before going back for the night. Unfortunately Julia’s purse got stolen by someone. It was a two person set up. Someone must have seen us walking, and then back tracked to get behind us. One person ran by and snatched her purse, and then jumped on the back of a motorcycle and the both of them sped off.  That was the first time I had had any experience with crime or anything of the sort during my whole trip.

The next day my friend Amber and I went out to the markets, and then met up with a friend of a friend of hers who lived in Viet Nam and we went and hung out with him for a day. That day was fun because the markets were busy and good deals were being made. We had pho which was hard to eat with chopsticks but was good to have tried.

The day after that I slept in and met up with my extended family sister Hannah, and we set off for the Viet Nam War Remnants Museum, something I had really wanted to see. The museum cost about .75 cents to get in and outside of it were large US military vehicles like tanks and jets, and even a plane and helicopter. The inside was something else all together. There were many different types of weapons and guns as well as ammunition. The worst thing was the pictures…the pictures were chilling. I’m having flashbacks as I type…they were gruesome, sickening, and real…very real. Down to the effects of bombs, torture by US soldiers, and the worst: the effects of Agent Orange. It was disgusting, awful, appalling, and every other word you can think to use along those lines. There were misshaped fetuses in tanks, and pictures of people with horrible birth defects. I don’t know when, or if I’ll be able to get those images out of my head…or if I even want to. In school back in the states we don’t learn about the war in that way…as in from the other side’s perspective. What happened, why it happened, and that we lost…that was a real eye-opener; one that I was glad, if not shocked to have.

That night I went out to dinner to a Mexican restaurant with Hannah at a place called Chico’s.  It was some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had in the States, but it was in Viet Nam, cooked by Vietnamese people…insane. After dinner Hannah and I went to the Crazy Buffalo and met some Kiwi’s and hung out for the night. It was great to talk to some non-SAS people for a change before going back for the night.

            The next day I hung out with Hannah again as well as her roommate Daniel. We went out for the day exploring some more markets, and eating some more. We ended up splitting up because the girls wanted to go to the spa and I decided to go to the movies before heading back to the ship. Little did I know, I was going to be greeted with tragic news.

               Upon going back to the ship those aboard were told to go to classroom 9 and wait to be told what had happened. When the dean came in she told us that a student had died in his room. Andre, a 20 year old student from California had overdosed on heroin in his room and died hours before being discovered. The girl who found him was with him the night before doing heroin with him, left in the morning, and then hours later made the cabin steward open his door, finding him dead, and bleeding from the mouth and nose. She then proceeded to wipe the heroin off of the bedside table and put it in her pocket. The medical team was then called, and he was pronounced dead soon after. The ship called a meeting for everyone onboard, and told us a very abbreviated version of what had happened…basically that he had died. I went back out for the night, finding the ship to be too somber…rightfully so of course, but it was just all too uncomfortable for me. I ended up going back to the same Mexican restaurant with my friend Amber and then walked around the city for a bit.

            When we came back to the ship about three hours later, it was closed off and there were many students sitting over to one side waiting to be let one. I stood on the opposite side of the entry way with Amber and another student also waiting to be let on, when several crew members walked down the gangway with a black body bag. Only the three of us could see, but they took Andre’s body off of the ship, and loaded it into an ambulance before driving away with the sirens off.  After that we were allowed to board the ship, and after that the rumors started. The MV Explorer is much smaller once you walk inside of it.

            The day after was uneventful, I went to the market and did some exploring before going back to the ship. I then went out and found one of my friends and went to dinner with her at…once again, Chico’s. It was just so good, I had to have it as much as I could! We ate dinner, and then left to get back to the ship before on ship time.

            Viet Nam is definitely on the top of my list when it comes to my favorite countries. There was a lot to see, and not some much to do, but even though you were doing some of the same things every day, it was all fun. Even if you went to the same market, there was some new stall that you hadn’t seen before. I would definitely like to come back to Viet Nam and see some other parts of the country. Viet Nam was a country that I was excited to go to and it met and then surpassed my expectations. Now the question is: How do I get all the movies and television shows I bought back to the US and through customs?

Give Me Something to Sing...apore

Coming from India, going to Singapore was like going to New York City. Singapore is modern, wealthy, and clean…three things I wouldn’t say first when describing India. For the first time in five years, Semester at Sea students were allowed to disembark and get off of the ship. Before, the ship would dock and refuel, but no one was allowed to get off. In our preport,  we were all warned to be on our best behavior due to the strict laws that Singapore has regarding drugs and alcohol., and since it was Halloween the night that we arrived, Halloween + Semester at  Sea could easily equal a problem.

We were only going to be in Singapore for about 36 hours, so there was only so much time to do the bunch of things there was to do. For the first day Julia, Joann, Collin and I went to the Raffles Hotel for a world famous Singapore Sling, and then to the mall to meet Joann’s friend who lives in Singapore. Collin, Julia and I decided to go to the zoo, the best zoo in Asia, and one of the best in the world. It was awesome, we saw an elephant show, they had three white tigers, and we saw a pygmy hippo give birth.

After we got back from the zoo, I had to get ready and go to the Singapore Flyer, the tallest ferris wheel in the world for a high class dinner. The taxi situation in Singapore is pretty awful. Taxis will only pick you up from certain designated taxi  waiting areas, you cannot hail them from the street, so if there is a long line of people waiting for a taxi (and there usually is) you may have to wait a while. I got caught behind a really long line at the zoo, so I got back to the ship late. I took less than ten minutes to change, and then left to take a taxi to the flyer. Unfortunately the trip from the ship to the street takes about ten to fifteen minutes because we were docked in a cruise terminal. It was six oclock when I actually got into the taxi, the same time I was supposed to be at the flyer, unfortunately I didn’t have any cash on me and the taxi I got into refused to take my card, so he dropped me off in the middle of the street. Thankfully another taxi driver picked me up and was able to bring me to an ATM and then to the flyer, which I arrived at almost twenty minutes late.

The dinner was awesome, the food wasn’t amazing, but at $120 dollars you get decent food and great ambience. It was really cool to get to be sitting on the world’s highest ferris wheel eating dinner and seeing Singapore lit up all around and below us…it was awesome. When the dinner was over, I made my way back to the ship to meet Joann, Julia, and Collin to go out for Halloween. We took a taxi to a busy part of the city and walked around enjoying the nightlife and having a good time before going back to the ship for the night.

The next day Collin, Julia, and I took off for Universal Studios for the day. The two main rides were closed but it was an awesome time. We bought some of the pictures that they take on the rides, and went to Chili’s for lunch. It was really fun and it was cool to go to Universal Studios in Singapore. After that we stopped at the grocery store and then got back on the ship. Singapore was really fun, but expensive compared to the other countries we had been in. Singapore really isn’t all that different from home, and it was a good friendly reminder of what I’ll be going back to soon.

India...The land of Chutiyas...Oh the Chutiyas.

India…was such an experience, an experience that I am so grateful for being able to have had. After having come from Mauritius, where it was all fun all the time, India was going to put everything back into perspective again, which of course it did. In fact, that was my only assumption about India that came true…the others (being more other people’s assumptions that were told to me, rather than actually being my own) were, in my opinion, exaggerated or untrue.

Getting off of the ship in India was a challenge. This was the first port where we needed not only our passports, but also a piece of paper stating which electronics we had brought into the country. It was a little hard remembering to keep track of those two things just because there was so much to see and do that our minds were preoccupied by other things. The other challenge was the line that we had to wait in to get past security and out into the city because it was long…very long.

Finally free of the line, Collin, Joann, and I tried our hand at negotiating with an auto rickshaw driver, and we hitched a ride to a random street, and went looking for food. Driving in a rickshaw is an experience everyone must have in their life…it is thrilling, crazy, and downright terrifying, but most of all it is amazingly fun. A rickshaw is a small three wheeled go-cart-like vehicle with a roof that weaves in and out of traffic at high speeds and beeps constantly…it was amazing. Anyway, the three of us got dosas, drank from coconuts on the side of the road, and a bunch of other things we were told not to do by the medical team…my attitude was that I wasn’t not going to enjoy India because I was scared that I was going to get sick, which I hadn’t so far in the trip, so I didn’t worry about it. The place that we went for lunch served dosas, which was exciting for me because I went to Hampton Chutney Co. in SoHo, NYC before I left where I had a dosa for the first time…and there is no comparison. While the dosa I had in NYC was mostly cold, soggy, and hard to eat, the dosa I had in India was crisp, hot, delicious, and easy to pick up and enjoy. It was awesome!

After lunch we wanted to go shopping so we hopped on another rickshaw and asked the driver to take us to the market…and he promptly took us to the mall, the very expensive, very Americanized mall…so we went in and explored a little, seeing nothing we wanted and left, and hopped on another rickshaw and asked to go to the market once again. This time the driver told us that the market was closed and took us to other very expensive stores until it opened. This went on for some time until finally he brought us to Pondi Bazaar, a big market lined up and down the streets. We soon realized that those shops paid drivers to take tourists to their stores instead of the markets. There was no way the bazaar closed in the middle of the day, it was huge and packed…we were definitely duped. Thankfully though, a rickshaw ride is usually a dollar, so we didn’t feel that bad about it.

We walked around, bought a few things (I only got a set of glass bracelets for my best friend Alexandria because they were teal and gold, the colors she painted her dresser, so they reminded me of her), and by that time we were hungry so we went out for dinner. We ended up at this nice restaurant and had the best meal of my entire time in India. Curry chicken, chicken pakodas, bread (something similar to naan, but not) chicken tikka masala, and prawn masala, fresh lime juice, and Indian ice cream. Ah, it was so good! We had also gone grocery shopping beforehand, so after that we hopped into another rickshaw and headed back to the ship for the night.

The next morning I was up and ready to go for my Art of Living trip, which was a three day yoga and meditation class taught by an Indian Guru. There were 32 of us, and we got together, got on the bus and took off. We made a few stops along the way to a few temples and the butterball, a huge sphere made of solid stone sitting on a rock slope for hundreds of years, never moving. We weren’t able to appreciate the sights as much as we wanted to do to the massive amounts of people trying to sell you things. And by things I mean marble carvings, bracelets, charms, and so many other things…it was insane. Anyway, I bought a few things for a good price, especially when like the rest of the countries I’ve been to bargaining is the name of the game.

 When we finally got the village we were staying at, we had lunch, had some free time, and at 4:30 our yoga sessions began. Over the course of the next three days (Actually we had 12 hours the first day, 24 the second, and 12 the third) we had about twenty hours of yoga and meditation. We had some time to shop in the craft market, go on a tour, and we had amazing food. But there was a lot of meditation, and in the end while I’m glad I did it…I’m not sure I would do twenty hours of it in forty-eight hours again. It was amazing experience however, especially a two hour meditation session that was truly an out of body experience…unreal. One moment I was just lying there, the next I was in a deep trance, and the next I was sitting up…in what felt like the time span of a minute. It might sound like I was asleep, but I know that I wasn’t, it was something much more than that though, and unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

When we left it was odd, it was like everything sped back up again…because when we arrived it all seemed to slow down. I’m glad I went. When we arrived back on the ship it was time for a shower, and then I went out with Joann again for some pretty undelicious (Joann’s word) expensive food. That was a disappointment, but also fun because I was back in the city and able to go out and explore again. After going out for the night, we headed back to the ship for some sleep…I was exhausted!

The next day, I had my Indian Cooking demonstration SAS trip. It was not what I thought it would be…less interactive and less enjoyable than I had hoped, but like everything even if it wasn’t that fun it was still an experience that I was glad that I had. The woman who was cooking was the Indian equivalent of Rachel Ray, and with a little counter stove and microwave made a few Indian dishes, and then we ate the food that was made for lunch. Afterwards, we got back to the ship where I hooked up with my friend Mindy, who I met on the Art of Living and my other friend Amanda. We went out to the mall, went to a spa, and went grocery shopping before getting dinner and heading back to the ship. I got ready to go out again with Julia. We were looking for places to go out, but everywhere was closed. We ran into our friends Elizabeth and Liz who were hanging out with a few locals that they knew and we all went back to one of their houses to hang out before heading back to the ship for the night.

The next (and last) day I went out with Julia and Joann and Collin for the day and we went back the spa for the appointment we had made. We went out shopping a little, and then got some food before we went back to the ship to make it back before on ship time. India was great…I had heard so many negative things about it beforehand, I was worried to be honest, but once I got there I really didn’t see the truth in any of them. My favorite memory was in a rickshaw one day when a beggar woman came up to the side of us and started asking for money by putting her hand out. She then proceeded to shut her left eye and cover it with part of her clothing, trying to insinuate that she didn’t have an eye…except for the fact that I had seen it before she tried to cover it. I pointed to my eye, and then to hers…and then she smiled, uncovered and opened her eye and smiled, still asking for money…it was hysterical.

India was an amazing time; I would love to go back to a different part and see more of it. I enjoyed the Art of Living, the food, the cheap shopping…I enjoyed it all, even the traffic. The people we nice, the reality of the real world that you get confronted by is awful to realize, but a necessity to see. India was real, it was raw, and it was amazing.

Mauritius...So Delicious

               I’d been looking forward to Mauritius since before the trip even began. On Facebook a girl mentioned that she was going to be getting a Villa and was looking for people to come with her. I booked my spot, and then waited until October 14^th until we arrived in Mauritius. During our preport the professor who spoke made no qualms about it…Mauritius was spring break, and I knew it was going to get crazy…which of course, being SAS it did.

            My original plan was to go see the waterfalls and do some diving and swimming, and then go the Casela Nature Reserve and play with some lions. Originally it was only Mike and Allison and I, and then Kamrin and Daniel asked to come along. When we got off of the ship we asked one of the taxi drivers that was standing out front  to take us to the waterfall, but he refused telling us that swimming wasn’t allowed, which I knew wasn’t true but we didn’t fight it. Instead we arranged for an Island tour that would show us the cools sights of Mauritius.

            We piled into the taxi and made our way to a volcano. It was huge and green covered in lush vegetation. We were at the very top and the view of the island was amazing. The next stop was to a mini waterfall where we were able to swim in a little in a small lagoon and climb the waterfall and sit in it. It was so refreshing…and it was a blast! The next stop was lunch, and then we were off to the nature park to play with the lions. That was amazing! There were two in the enclosure, one sitting in a tree growling the whole time, and one that was with us on the ground. I had pet a cheetah in South Africa but since cheetahs sleep 18 hours a day, it wasn’t as interactive as the lion encounter was. She was gorgeous and full of energy always moving around and nuzzling. It was a great experience!

            After that Daniel and Kamrin went back to the ship and Allison, Mike, and I went to the villa. Dinner was already being made, so we ate when we arrived and then hung out on the beach for the night, swimming and having a good time. It was a much needed relaxation period   and I’m glad we did it. The next day we hung out on the beach until we had to get back to the ship. Mauritius was fun…and that’s about it. There wasn’t a cultural aspect to take in, not for SAS anyway. We’ll probably be the last voyage to go to Mauritius, as SAS has proven to be too much trouble for the island. This time the worst thing that I heard happened was that someone threw an empty liquor bottle at a waiter across the street and it hit him shattering everywhere. No wonder why they took half our time away from us…

            Anyway, it was a nice 36 hour spring break and much needed. The beautiful weather, great food and white sand beaches were…quite simply, delicious.