Hello There Mainland Africa!

HELLOOO MAINLAND AFRICA! I am currently sitting outside taking a studying break, staring out on one side at a beautiful sunny day (the temperature is perfect enough that I am able to sit in the shade with jeans and t-shirt on... perfect) with the incredible blue water reflecting the bright sun and cloudless sky. On the other side is at the moment a fairly large city but has throughout the earlier part of the day been the rural Africa that I pictured. Some friends estimate that we are about 20 miles away from the coast and I am going to believe them since I have no concept of distance. It is pretty amazing. We had a really rocky day yesterday, and according to the map on our screen knew that we were pretty close to Africa but it wasn’t until last night once the sun set and we were able to see the city of Durban lit up. From what I have heard, the reason that we are so close to the shore is that it is either the shortest distance and easiest way to get to Cape Town, but also that this is the area where all the sailors/explorers used to fail their mission to sail around the world all those years ago. After yesterday I understand why no boats could make it through. It is crazy that mainland Africa is so close to me right now. I just want to swim ashore already, I am so excited! We arrive in Cape Town in a little under two days!

 Happy Passover to all the Jews reading this!!

Port Louis, Mauritius

Mauritius… what can I say? It is magnificently beautiful all over the island. If you think that Hawaii is paradise, you have another think coming. According to a Mark Twain quote, “God made Mauritius, and then based Heaven off of it.” Aside from the fact that Semester at Sea students are known to wreak havoc whenever we have been to the island, people were extremely nice to us (aside from some people trying to get houses and hotel rooms for the night) and it was such an interesting place. If you don’t know, as I didn’t before the trip, Mauritius is an island off of Africa, to the east of Madagascar (we passed it yesterday and could see it out our windows). It is a MAJOR tourist spot of Europeans, Indians and some Africans. There are a large amount of Indian and French locals on the island, and the majority of people that I interacted with spoke French, Creole, and English. Similarly to the majority of Caribbean Islands, people in Mauritius are definitely on island time. Some people had some crazy stories about how relaxed on time their cab or catamaran drivers were when they were on such a tight schedule due to being here only two days.

When we docked in the morning, I went out with one of my friends to find somewhere to use the internet. We had been told that there was coast-to-coast wifi throughout the island (the only country in the world with it) but we had no such luck. We were docked pretty far from the main part of the city, and since no one knew exactly where to go it took us a little while to get there. (The only piece of advice we received was from the diplomat who gave the diplomatic briefing who told us to go towards the tall buildings… You can’t see the tall buildings until you are really close.) When we finally found where to go, we stopped in a shopping complex to eat something and use the computer. I needed to job search badly. Unfortunately, we had to eventually succumb to paying for internet for an hour. After that, we met up with two other friends that we were traveling with for the afternoon to go to an adventure park. The drive out to the park, which was about an hour away and far into the countryside, was incredible. The views were just unbelievable and breathtaking. I have never seen a bluer sky and water, greener plants, etc. We drove to a town called Chamarel, which was out in the mountains and went deep into the forest to find the park. We got set up with our gear, deeted up (bug spray) since the bugs were supposed to be crazy as it was a fairly rainy day and incredibly muddy, and set off to complete the ropes course. It started off with just a series of these foot bridges that were right in the heart of the forest and everything around you was botanically fantastic. Since it was so muddy and our shoes were completely caked with layers of mud, people kept slipping and sliding all over them- we were hooked up to a rope so it was ok. When we finished that section, we hiked up to the ropes course. We then spent the next hour or so going through a bunch of obstacles that were different than most ropes courses I have experienced. It REALLY didn’t help that our feet were muddy either, it required much more arm work so that we didn’t fall. After we finished, we were covered in mud, disgustingly sweaty and unbelievably thirsty… but it was worth it, we had a lot of fun.

On our drive back to the ship, we stopped at a grocery store since we hadn’t really eaten yet that day and it was getting really late. I had already noticed it in Port Louis and definitely felt the culture shock, but there were so many white people all over the place, especially in the grocery store. It was so different than what we have been used to the past two months, where if you see a white person in port, especially a young one, odds are it’s a SAS person. Whats amazing and definitely going to be weird when we return to the states, is that the amount of white people aren’t even nearly as great as it will be back at home. Anyway, the grocery store was amazing. I forgot how much I miss grocery shopping when I know what all the foods are and plan on spending hours in the A & P when I get back home. They had Laughing Cow cheese, which was my favorite find to the point where I didn’t stop talking about it the rest of the day because I was so excited. They had a ton of other brands that we find at home too. We were in a rush though so we couldn’t spend too much time there and went back to the ship to quickly shower and get ready to go out.

We ended up staying in Port Louis for the night because the cabs to the big bar areas in Mauritius are incredibly expensive and some of my friends didn’t want to pay it. We ended up having a really fun night, went out for a nice dinner, and then ended up at a bar with probably the rest of the SASers that didn’t leave the city as well as some of the crew which was fun. We also went to a casino and it was exciting to be legal and able to gamble in one. Eventually we called it a night and took a water taxi back to the ship.

The next morning we had to leave the ship by 8 so that we could meet the rest of our group and the catamaran that we were taking out for the day in Grand Bay, about 45 minutes north of us. Speaking of direction, one of the funniest things about signs on the island is that because it is so small a lot of signs just say The North or The South and that is all that some people know about where they were. The catamaran was awesome. It was a beautiful day out, we got to swim and snorkel and there is no greater excitement about swimming in the ocean greater than a bunch of people that have spent an entire semester so far staring at it wanting nothing more than to jump in it. We spent some time on a beach that was about an hour boat ride away from the island and the water and surroundings were just beautiful. It was an excellent day.

When we got back on the ship, I had a phone interview and then we watched the ship leave Mauritius… for SOUTH AFRICA!!!! SO EXCITING!!

Sunrise, Sunset

The sunrises and sunsets have been beyond incredible this whole time pretty much. We sit and stare all the time. Especially the last few days though, the sun was setting bright red, and rising a beautiful, radiant pink (yes, I woke up for the sunrise). We are all also falling in love with the ocean. It is just so crazy to sit and stare at the water and the suns reflections and the colors lighting up the sky and realize that we are just such a tiny part of the world. We are a dot in the big blue ocean. It’s just so amazingly beautiful every day. I don’t know how I am going to not be able to watch it all the time when I get back home. I might be sitting by the lakes in Madison this summer every sunrise/sunset. Anyway, here are some things that we have been up to lately…

Disney Movies: We have been watching non-stop Disney movies as both my friend and I got these massive Disney movie packages in Vietnam- 136 movies!! It is incredible. So that has been really great and exciting…

Crossed the Equator: NEPTUNE DAY! There is a tradition that when you cross the equator you honor that day as Neptune Day by having fish guts poured on you, kissing a fish, and shaving your head. So, that day just passed and it was a lot of fun. There were rumors that the crew would wake us up at 5am but they didn’t until 8 by drumming and dancing down the hallways. Then, everyone went out to the top deck where the festivities began. I am amazed at how many people shaved their heads. I have heard something like 200 people and around 50 of them are girls. It’s absolutely hilarious to walk around the ship and just see all these bald heads. Someone made a funny comment about how everyone decided to shave their heads to look like skinheads/neo-nazis right before we get to Africa. But yeah, when I have the chance I will post a picture of me with my newly shaved head. It’s sadly not very smooth. The good news though is that they added in a locks of love donation possibility so a lot of people were also just cutting their hair short and donating!

Talent Show: We have an unbelievably talented group of people on the ship. Aside from the talented singers that are inevitably found in a large group of people, there was a competitive jump roper, breakdancers, swing, hula and salsa dancers, incredibly talented poets/rappers, etc. It was a long show but definitely entertaining. There are also a bunch of singers who have cd’s coming out after the voyage. Crazy.

Cochin, India

When I walked on the ship I ran into some friends who were planning on going to see a Bollywood movie in about fifteen minutes. I decided to join them and ran to shower and change because I was gross after the full day of traveling. Two of my friends had passed a theater earlier but weren’t sure of the name, just knew that they were supposed to tell the rickshaw driver to go to the cinema. At this point when we left the pier, my friend mentioned something about how the city was filled with the Indian army and navy because of some terror threats and I learned about the failed attack on Mumbai. So the rest of the night I was definitely on edge driving through the city- the only thing that was keeping me sane is knowing that if it was truly dangerous for us to be around the port Semester at Sea wouldn’t allow us off the ship. So, we started off at one theater that was playing a scary movie and we vetoed that 3 to 1 thank god. We walked around that area for a little while before finding another rickshaw driver to take us to another cinema, where they weren’t playing a scary movie. The ticket and popcorn cost less than two dollars. AMAZING. We saw a movie that none of us can figure out the name of that was one of the weirdest and most twisted and corny love stories we had ever seen. It was all in an Indian language that we couldn’t identify aside from a few random cliché English phrases. Yet, we completely understood the plot (we think) and the only thing we really missed out on is some of the reasoning for certain things and the few times a joke was made and we didn’t understand what they said. The main story line of the movie was guy meets girl, guy realizes that girls father is the man who raped and killed his sister whom he was extremely close with when they were little, guy meets father and threatens him and they both try to kill each other at different points, father eventually admits his wrongdoings and then commits suicide, movie ends with girl and guy getting together still. SO ODD, but great. The “attractive” guys in Indian movies (and music videos) are SO unbelievably different than the attractive American man. They are heavier and all have these intense mustaches. The girls were also not stick thin. After the movie ended we went back to the ship to sleep.

The following morning I met up with some friends to go do some shopping for our service visits and check out some of the city. We ended up getting a great rickshaw driver who took us to the perfect spots. I was able to get cheap board games and lots of pens and stuff for the children in the next few countries. We also went to check out the water where the Chinese fishing nets were before heading back to the ship to grab lunch before my service visit.

The service visit was to an SOS Children’s Village- they are found all around the world. The organization is truly an incredible one, and is a very well-known charity and large recipient of celebrity donations. So, I was not very surprised when we arrived to a beautiful “village” with incredible gardens, houses, and well-dressed and happy children. The hundred or so children there are separated about 15 people to a house and have a mother figure that lives with them as well as aunts and uncles that help them out. The children refer to the other children in their home as their brothers and sisters and you can definitely see that there is a strong family love and bond between them. The children are well-educated, and most of them grow up to do great things with their lives. We had about an hour to play with them following a welcome show and then we left. While I think that it was great that we were there and provided the children with some outside company on our visit, there were a lot of things that I was unhappy with afterwards. First, I was under the impression that we would be doing some actual service on our service visit. There were around 100 SASers, and given that people were going and building schools and bathrooms and houses on their service visits in extremely impoverished villages, I thought that our willingness to do some sort of service was wasted. Second, there were too many people there to just play with one child for an hour. I don’t regret going per say, but I regret not figuring out something else to do that would have been much more impacting to more people.

That night we watched the ship leave and it was a bittersweet moment as we said goodbye to not only India, but Asia, and realized that we had the next three ports in AFRICA!!

Delhi and Agra, India

We had to meet in the ship’s union the second day to leave for our trip to the Taj Mahal! The airport in Chennai was incredibly old and low-tech, tiny and ALL on the ground level, which was extremely different than any airport I had ever seen before. What this meant is that you took these shuttle buses from the gate, to the planes where you walked on. It wasn’t that the planes were tiny, it was just that the airport was. The most interesting part of the whole airport/security experience is that there was a separate line for males and females, and girls walked through a metal detector, but it was off and we were just checked with one of the wand detectors behind a curtain. It was different. There was also always just one line for females at all the other security areas we went to throughout the trip versus at least two for males. I have learned that while traveling, I like to have the window seat (don’t worry Lorrie just while traveling to new places) because you can see some incredible views, especially through India where we were never high above the clouds. We took off and landed twice due to a stop in Bangalore. When we finally arrived in Delhi, we headed right to our beautiful hotel, where we once again had to go through security, and then had a whole greeting ceremony inside with a drink, bindi being placed on our forehead and we got flower leis! There was a pretty little sign as well that said welcome SAS. It was so nice. We then quickly had a delicious Indian food buffet lunch and then went to tour around Delhi.

We went to both Old and New Delhi, which is beautiful in some parts and incredibly impoverished in others. We went through it all on a bus, and consequently sat through a ton of traffic, but it allowed us to see a lot of sights and people. One area that we passed through was filled with construction sites and lots of people living on them. Children were hanging out on the side of the roads wearing next to nothing, but waving and smiling as they watched us pass by. It seemed that no one was immune to waving at us- including the children playing in the road, the construction workers, or even people driving in cars (we almost saw a few people crash due to staring at us and not looking in front of them). In contrast to the poorer areas we saw lots of beautiful monuments and temples surrounded by green parks. The first stop on our tour was the Gandhi Museum, which is where Gandhi spent his last days and was eventually shot. It was amazing to see and incredibly interesting. There was so much that I didn’t know about Gandhi. There were quotes that he had stated all over the place and my favorite was “My goal is friendship with the world and I can combine the greatest opposition to wrong. I have implicit faith in my mission that, if it succeeds- as it will succeed- history will record it as a movement designed to knit all people in the world together, not as hostile to one another but as parts of one whole.” We took a picture stop at the Baha’i House of Worship, the residences of a bunch of different government officials, and finally toured a Sikh Temple.

The Sikh Temple was beautiful, but also served a really great and interesting purpose. Sikhs have to pay 5% of their income to the temple, so that they can provide food for the community. They have this large hall that serves as a huge kitchen. However, the food is not provided as a means of charity, but rather is available for people of all religions to eat together in peace. Inside the temple, there was a service being conducted in the center of the room, and people were scattered all around it sitting on the floor and either meditating or just watching.

I was talking to my mom that night and when she asked “how is India?” I responded, “I am in love.” She said “with who?” to which I laughed and said “India!” I said that I am in love with the people, the culture, the food, the colors, the smiles, the cities, etc. And that was just the second day.

We had a lovely 5:15 wake-up call the next day so that we could take an early three hour train to Agra. The whole station was packed with Indian families and tourists just like us. The first train that stopped in front of us had a smell leaving it that immediately hit you in the face, had bars over the windows rather than glass, and had people just literally jumping on and off of it before it came to a stop. We weren’t on that one. Our train was basically like an old train with the tray tables and everything. The views through the countryside were once again amazing. I did my best to sleep as little as possible as we went through slums, villages, wealthier areas, farms, etc. When we got off the train my disastrous breakfast box encounter happened (see older post for details) and then went to our hotel where we were once again greeted in a great ceremony similar to the last hotels but there was music being played this time.

We went to some store that our tour guide gets kickbacks for where they did a whole demonstration on how to make cashmere and silk rugs and then tried to sell a bunch of traveling college students things that cost over 1000 dollars. It was a bit of a joke. We went back to the hotel for lunch afterwards and then left for the Taj Mahal! We were shockingly not met by a ton of beggars at the Agra Fort, our first stop before the Taj. Agra Fort was a mixture of a battle fort, a jail, a mosque, and a palace. There were beautiful gardens and the architecture of it was amazing. There was also an amazing view of the Taj far off in the distance from the top of it. A little bit later, we got back on the bus to finally go to the Taj Mahal. After going through security, you have to walk through these big solid gates that are blocking the view so right as you walk through them its just THERE. There were a lot of beautiful gardens, ponds, and marble platforms in front of it that we spent a lot of time by taking pictures. There were workers running around with whistles yelling at some of the tourists trying to fill up their water bottles in the fountains. We saw the inside of the Taj Mahal, but apparently missed the things that you are supposed to see (like the precious stones) since our tour guide had told us nothing. That was pretty upsetting to find out afterwards. There were people on other trips that didn’t even get time to go inside though so at least we did. Also unfortunately, we stayed long enough to see the sun slightly set but left about 15 minutes before the sky would have lit up in such a way that the colors of the Taj change.

The next morning we had an amazing breakfast before driving to the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri. It was a huge architecturally beautiful area filled with pretty gardens and the whole place just seemed to go on forever. My friend and I spent some time speaking with a man and his grandsons who took some pictures with us and then gave us their address so that we could send them. It was cute. About 15 minutes before we had to leave, two of the other SAS groups arrived there… there were over 170 SASers there- total chaos! Afterwards our whole group was talking about how happy we were that our group was tiny and people got along because we all were hearing from our friends about how disastrous their trips were.

That afternoon was an incredible one. We started off gong to Mother Theresa’s Ashram, an incredible orphanage. I spent the majority of our very short period of time there with children with disabilities. They were all incredible and I had such an amazing time with them. I have never seen such smiling and excited children in my life. After that, since my friend and I were the only two people left in there we decided to go find our group, who were in a section of the orphanage that had the most adorable tiny babies and toddlers I have ever seen. I spent most of my time with this one little boy, who I later sent a picture of to my mom asking if she knew anyone who was looking to adopt. He received a snack at one point and after taking a bite immediately took a piece to give to me. I have the most amazing picture of him offering me his food. I sat with this little boy and his friend who were hilarious with each other (I plan on using my internet time and uploading pictures of them later) until an older girl tapped me and told me that my group was gone. I sadly said goodbye to all the kids and ran to catch up with my group, but not before this other little boy took his juice box and wouldn’t let me leave until I “took a sip” of it. Luckily, I have a lot of practice pretending to eat and drink fake food/drinks so it wasn’t a problem. The thing that I most took out of this visit is that if these children that I met can appreciate everything that they have with the smiles on their faces and be the most amazing, bright children offering us their snacks, then we have a lot that we can learn from them.

A bunch of people wanted to go shopping afterwards so we went to this cute little area of Agra to check out some stores. It was difficult to do after the orphanage. We then went to dinner at a Pizza Hut, which in India is a nice sit down Italian restaurant and was delicious. Since we couldn’t finish all of our food, a few of us went out with our leftover pizza to try to find these two children that we had seen asking for food earlier. We walked around for about 20 minutes trying to find them but we couldn’t and that was sad. We noticed this apartment complex as we were walking, where these little boys were playing cricket in the yard and the girls were sitting around outside. We waved to them and one older boy came over to talk to us with his little baby brother. Eventually, after talking to the boy for a while, they decided that they trusted us enough to let us inside the gate to where they were playing cricket (it was a private residence). So, we played cricket with them for a while and the girls watching were laughing at how bad one of my friends was at it (he was used to playing baseball was his excuse). It was so much fun and we were sad when we had to get back on the bus. We had a long train ride back to Delhi that night but we had fun on it. When we got back late to the hotel everyone immediately ran to their rooms to shower and then go out in the few clubs inside the hotel. Indian nightlife is basically non-existent, so the bars and clubs that people go to are in hotels and they were filled with strictly tourists.

The next morning, we were able to get a late wake-up call before flying to Cochin. The flight was fine, some people were extremely sick on it because of some sort of food poisoning or they drank the water from the sink or some other sort of causation for an intestinal problem so that was interesting. I felt really bad. Tons of people are sick still (days after leaving India) because of something that they ate or drank. I just got lucky I guess. We arrived in the Cochin airport at around 4:30. As we entered the terminal and the city in general, it was very clear that this was India’s resort-esque city. I was reminded a lot of Mexico actually. It took us an hour and a half to get to the port, where we then had to wait to go through customs for over an hour. By the time we got to the ship and got through security it was 7:45! Definitely a very, very long day.

More to come soon about my time in Cochin…

Just A Thought...

“It’s not doing the things we like to do,

but liking the things we have to do, that

makes life blessed.”

-Goethe

Chennai, India

Our first day in India, I woke up at around 7 to look out my window at the water as usual. Then, I noticed somewhere to the side of our window a few men on a tiny boat waving at my roommate and I looking out the window. Then it hit me… WE ARE IN INDIA!! The country that I was most excited for on this trip was finally here! I jumped around my room for some time, continued to wave at the men in the boat until they started making motions for food, and I went upstairs to eat (ironic and rude, right?) As we pulled into the port throughout the next hour or so, I took a bunch of pictures, mostly of the massive amounts of boats out waving to us, excited to see us SASers pulling up to their city. We learned later that people in Chennai look forward to the two times a year that we visit and that people like the auto-rickshaw drivers actually base their yearly income predictions off of it and so they were disappointed when they learned that the boat would only be there for 2 days instead of the typical five to six days. Anyway, there were a ton of little boats and it was so incredible to see and then when you looked the other way you saw the incredibly industrial port of Chennai up front, and the little bit of India peeking through behind it. We had diplomatic briefing some time later and it was the most interesting one we have had yet. One of the men gave us advice on bars, types of alcohol to stay away from, PDA laws in the country… and then about the current terror threats and the places that we should make sure to NOT go to. Fun stuff.

When we were finally cleared to leave the ship, I set off to explore the city with a few of my friends. Luckily, we had no issues with customs, but a ton of people had complications due to India’s spontaneously changing customs laws that they were unaware of. One of these was that you needed your passport to get on and off the ship in Chennai, and they had told people that were traveling with the ship to leave theirs on the ship. It was slightly disastrous, and announcements were being made every few minutes about the change of papers and documents we need with us. The walk to actually enter the city of Chennai is about 10-15 minutes from where the ship is located, and even after that you have to go through another set of customs officials so we had more lines. Walking around the port, the workers would drive by in their trucks waving at us and even though we had oil and dirt splashing all over our legs and were dripping in the sun, we were so excited and amazed already by Indian people.

As soon as we left the port’s gates, we were bombarded by auto-rickshaw drivers. Literally ambushed. My friend was talking to one of them when we were waiting for a friend to get money from the ATM, and even though we were going on a walking tour he followed us all the way out down the main road trying to give us a ride. We couldn’t believe it! Since we couldn’t figure out where we were going, we decided to ask him for help. He told us that we were walking in the wrong direction and that to get to where we wanted you couldn’t walk because of train tracks. So we got into two rickshaws and started along. I thought that Vietnam traffic was bad… I had no idea that India was one of the most terrifying countries to drive in. The auto-rickshaws are these doorless mini toy-esque cars and they were winding through traffic with tons of motorcycles, cars and buses. It was terrifying. We were driving down one busy road and our driver turns around to talk to us- TURNS AROUND COMPLETELY. My friend kept screaming at him to look at the road which was hilarious. We finally arrived at our destination, paid them and got out but they STILL FOLLOWED US. These people just didn’t give up. I don’t know when they finally left us, but we eventually didn’t see them anymore and kept walking through the recommended path.

We walked through Burma’s Bazaar, the fruit market, Rattan Bazaar, Evening Bazaar, then took a rickshaw to a main shopping/tourist street where we ate an incredible Indian lunch and did some shopping. Everyone everywhere that we walked was extremely friendly, excited to see Americans, would ask for us to take pictures of them, don’t haggle you to buy their stuff, and most importantly, we didn’t come across too many beggars. This was very surprising to all of us. The kids in India are all adorable to say the least. We saw some playing on rickshaws which was hilarious, some sitting with their parents outside stores, etc. When we were walking through the Rattan Bazaar, these two little boys came running at us with these amazing hugs and couldn’t stop giggling. They were precious. Of course, after playing around with them for a little, one of them stuck his hand out for money and the other tugged adorably on my friends pockets and it was so hard to say no to them, but luckily their mom came over and walked away with them. Lunch was DELICIOUS. I don’t know how I have never had Indian food before but it was incredible. Everything that I ate the entire week I loved, but especially this first meal. My favorite was paneer stuffed naan, which is basically cheesy bread (steph) and it was delicious. I also got some sort of corn masala dosai (crepe filled with veggies) and that was also excellent. I also learned that sometimes I have to suck up not liking spicy foods and deal with it. When we left lunch we were walking down this incredibly busy street and this auto-rickshaw driver comes up to us and starts talking and it took us a few seconds to register that this was the original driver that we had. He told us that he had been waiting for us for three hours—I don’t even know who told him that we were ending up there but it was absolutely crazy. People are extremely committed there. My friend and I ended up getting a ride back to the ship with him while our other friends shopped a little more and he showed us this bag of postcards that he had received from SASers over the last ten years! It was unbelievable and incredible and I love when we find SAS connections like that. There was one person that had written this whole long letter and mentioned that she sent money for his family that she had met and all this other great stuff. We wrote one to him too.

We had gone back to the ship to clean ourselves off before going back out for dinner and some shopping that night. When I took off my shoes and socks, I had a huge line of dirt on my ankle. The difference between covered skin and uncovered skin was crazy. I used a makeup-remover wipe to clean myself off a little before showering and one line of my leg made it BLACK. But the shower was definitely the most incredible one of my life!

A little bit later, we left to go meet up with one of the inter-port students that was helping my friends plan their trip with a travel agent at one of the malls. I walked around doing some shopping that I needed (more thin pants) while they met with the travel agent. Then, we went to eat another amazing meal of Indian food before heading back to the ship where I packed up my stuff and watched a movie.

That was my time in Chennai! It was definitely too short and I look forward to visiting again someday!

"Vision without action is a daydream, Action without vision is a nightmare." -Japanese Proverb

My dad wrote back after reading my last post “Still trying to figure out if you loved India the most or if the negatives so outweighed the positives for you.” I just want to reiterate that I absolutely loved India. I know that my story must not have made it sound like that but that was one five minute part of my entire six days there. Yes, it was probably the most impacting experience of my time there, but what everyone on the ship is discovering is that we learn a lot from these negative experiences and we can do something positive with our feelings about them.

I had an incredibly long debate with a few of my friends yesterday about making a difference. One of my friends said that one person CANNOT make a difference themselves; I said that one person can make a difference but cannot change the world, and my other friend said that he thinks one person CAN change the world. Our focus was really on poverty and solving poverty and all of that and came from talking about how hard it was to see all the poverty and not be able to do something about it at that specific moment and this specific visit. The point is though, that it brings out the desire to take action, to do SOMETHING, to make a difference to one single person or one single family just by spending time with them or building a house, school or bathroom for a community that lives in hutments, goes to school under a tree, and uses the street as a bathroom. It changes your perspective, it SHOULD change your perspective, it’s hard not to change your perspective when seeing poverty and interacting with people living in it. So whether or not it made me feel awful to not be able to give a child my leftover food, or go to an orphanage and just leave the kids there knowing that I am eventually going back to an amazing home and family, it is the most wonderful thing knowing that not only did my visit there open my eyes, and I can share my experiences with others who can share it with others, etc., but eventually through some form or another, I can make difference in an Indian person’s life and that is the most positive piece of knowledge. I didn’t say it, but I clearly plan on returning to India to do a lot more service-oriented work rather than just the straight up touring with a few hours total of service visits.

I also want to talk about the smiles. Wherever you are reading this from whether it is my friends abroad or my family at home in the US, the next time you are walking around the town or city you are in pay attention to the mouths of the people around you. Try waving to someone that you don’t know. Do they smile when passing you? Do they wave back or look around trying to figure out if you are waving at them or someone behind you? If you look at my pictures, the smiles stand out. You see smiling children and adults in the slums, smiling children in the orphanages, smiling vendors outside their stores and stands, smiles everywhere. When you wave a person that you have never had any interaction with on a street or from the bus, they excitedly wave back. There is such joy in so many people’s faces no matter what conditions they are living in. It is unfortunate that the whole world cannot be like that. But it makes you learn, it makes you grow, it makes you rethink the notion of appreciation. Some of these smiling people have NOTHING. A baby wearing just a shirt urinating on the side of the street while all the cars pass by; a disabled old man wheeling himself on a homemade wheelchair contraption living on the street, not even begging you for money as you walk by and stare; a mother with her barely dressed children walking through the muddy and bug filled marketplace… I have all these images constantly rolling through my mind, and all of these people are smiling. That leaves me with a positive feeling. It leaves me realizing that there is no reason for me to not spend the rest of MY life smiling. It makes me realize that I have it not only good, but great, excellent, as good as it gets. I am so happy that I was able to leave India with these feelings. That despite all the awful things I saw, I was able to take out the positives and be inspired by the incredible people of India. I will miss being able to walk through a marketplace that is too dirty and poverty-filled to even potentially exist in the States, and wave to strangers and have them smile and wave back. It’s impossible not to.

I hope that this helps balance out my last post a little. It’s not the most well-written thing I know. More to come later!

Initial India Reflection

India… how do I even begin to put my thoughts into words? It was fantastic, incredible, amazing, marvelous, remarkable, astonishing. I am so glad that Microsoft word creates synonyms for you. I am still processing the past six days and don’t know if I will ever be able to fully comprehend and handle the emotions that I felt while traveling all over this country that is guaranteed to have a profound impact on even the most cold-hearted of tourists. Throughout everything that I experienced, there was not a moment that was not making an impression on my mind and on my soul, whether it be positive or negative (possibly the corniest thing that I have ever said). I met some of the most inspiring people that have forever changed me, and I was fortunate enough to be on a trip with a small and amazing group of fellow students that were respectful and understanding of India’s culture and people. I mention the group that I was with because throughout the past 24 hours I have been hearing non-stop stories about some of the most despicable people that sadly are on Semester at Sea that were rude to their tour guides, the locals, and thought that not only should they be treated as first class citizens but that they shouldn’t treat others as humans. The past six days, I traveled in the south to Chennai and Cochin and in the north to Delhi and Agra. I saw poverty like I never could have imagined, and yet, we were told that these were the “nice” cities in India. I saw beggars (although not nearly as much as expected) that were children holding sedated babies known as “professional beggars,” children wearing no shoes and little clothing that were skinny as can be making the smallest gesture for food, adults missing limbs, and more. We were told to just walk past them and not pay any attention to them; I have never experienced any greater use of will power. My time in India involved a lot of ups and downs, a lot of anger but also a lot of joy and hope and a newfound appreciation for what I have that goes past material items and includes an incredible family and incredible friends.

Before I get started with the generic itinerary and explanation of what I did and who I met and why I feel the way that I do about India, I just want to share one story that probably impacted me the most out of anything on this trip so far. I spent the first few days in the cities of Chennai and Delhi, where we witnessed poverty but not nearly as many beggars as I had mentally and emotionally prepared myself for before arriving in India. So, when we took a train to Agra where the Taj Mahal is located, leaving at 7 in the morning to arrive at 10 am, I wasn’t thinking that it was a new city, new people, new lifestyles. Of course, India changes from village to village, house to house in terms of culture and language and religion and lifestyle. It is the most amazingly diverse place. So when we got off the train I was tired, had just woken up and was not focusing on the fact that there would potentially be more beggars at THIS train station since the other one in Delhi had none. We had all received box breakfasts before the train ride and I ate what I could before the train left and was preparing to throw it away when I could find a garbage. We had very specifically been told by our tour guide that we should NOT give ANYTHING to the beggars, not only because many of them are professional beggars but because it will make it difficult for the rest of the group and future tourists. I realize now that I should have ignored him and gone with my gut feeling, which is what I am getting to- mostly as I speak to others who had tour guides tell them that as long as it is not money there is nothing wrong with giving beggars things. I actually later this day asked my tour guide why he is against us giving them food or clothing or school supplies or really anything but money, since we had professors and fellow students tell us that anything but money was fine, and he told me that it is better going to the foundations and charities that help the poor in India but also once again that it creates complications for the group. Excuse my language, and I loved my group, but I wish that I said "f" the group. This is because when we were walking through the train station with our box breakfasts in hand, a boy came up to me and stared me straight in the eye while trying to take my box of food that I would inevitably throw in the garbage. I basically had a minute long tug of war with this little boy over something that was so unnecessary for me to keep, and was surrounded by a few more kids throughout that time wanting food as well. He did not take his eyes off mine the entire time and I cannot explain enough how I keep seeing his eyes and it makes me want to cry. Eventually, with the help of our trip leader, I was able to walk away from this crowd of children with a mangled box of food. I cried for about twenty minutes after this and have cried a few times since. What does the food mean to me? Nothing. If I want, I can have endless amount of delicious meals until I am sick. What gives me the privilege and the right to be able to eat what I want of this huge breakfast and throw the rest away, while a little boy sits starving in a train station, who would have the utmost appreciation for just a fraction of what I did not eat? I was and still am so angry at my tour guide and angry at myself and angry at the way the world works deciding who gets what and how. It just upsets me that I could be the worst person in the world and have more than a child who has done nothing but be born into poverty. Anyway, it definitely gives you something to think about.

Enough of that for now- just a quick summary of what I did each day so that you have some idea of whether or not you want to read the rest of my posts:

Day 1: arrived in Chennai, walked around the city for a few hours taking in everything we could, shopped a little, and had dinner with one of the inter-port students from India. (Inter-port students are students from the upcoming ports that spend the time in between telling us about their home and such)

Day 2: flew to Delhi, toured around seeing the sites including the Gandhi Museum and a Sikh Temple

Day 3: took a train from Delhi to Agra, visited the Agra Fort and Taj Mahal

Day 4: visited the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri, went to Mother Theresa’s Ashram (orphanage), spent time with some locals that were playing cricket, and took a train from Agra back to Delhi

Day 5: flew from Delhi to Cochin, went to see a Bollywood movie

Day 6: traveled around in the morning, went to an SOS Children’s Village for a “service visit” in the afternoon (will explain why service visit is in quotes), and said goodbye to India/Asia that night, which was an extremely bittersweet time

I am actually extremely exhausted at the current moment so this is all I will leave you with for now, sorry that it is fairly depressing. I will at least leave you with the knowledge that I started off this blog post saying that I had an incredible time so don’t think that I hated India in any way due to my story. Good night!

"The greatest ship is friendship" -C. Y. Tung

Every day we receive dean’s memos that have information about events, explorer seminars, important info about anything really, laundry days, etc. and they usually include a quote. So I have included a bunch of quotes that have caught my eye on some of them.

"Even after all these years,

The sun never says to the earth,

'You owe me.'

Look what happens with a love like that,

It lights up the whole sky." –Hafiz

"Men in a ship are always looking up,

and men ashore generally looking

down.” -John Masefield

“Never doubt that a small group of

thoughtful, concerned citizens can

change the world. Indeed, it is the only

thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead

“Vision without action is a daydream.

Action without vision is a nightmare.” -Japanese Proverb

Anyway, some of the things that I have been doing in between ports aside from just hanging out with friends:

After every port:

Post-ports: these are reflective sharing sessions where people basically just talk about their experiences and their feelings following the visits to each country. I have heard some really incredible things said by people who are able to speak very eloquently and it has definitely been helpful to hear other people say the things that I am thinking out loud.

Picture parties: get together with a bunch of friends that I spent my time with in whichever country we just visited and give each other our pictures. It’s extremely convenient.

Random events:

Middle School Dance: this was a middle school theme dance where they played strictly music from the 90’s and early 2000s. It was awesome. It brought back some lovely memories of being an awkward middle schooler. We also had a huge cha cha slide going at one point and it’s so cool that we all know this dance even though we are from all over.

Swing Dance: although they tried to make it a recurring class, it has been hard because of the few days that we have had at sea. However, there have now been two classes and I am slowly learning how to swing dance. It is a lot of fun. I have two good friends on the ship that teach it.

Sea Olympics and Spirit Week: spirit week was a failure and very few people dressed up let alone were aware that the days were themed. Sea Olympics was more exciting than that though. There were a series of different events going on throughout our day of no classes that involved competition between the seas. Reminder: each section of hallways are seas, I was Adriatic. The two events that I watched were lip synch, which was absolutely hilarious and definitely not pg rated, and synchronized swim, which I expected to be more entertaining than it was. I also saw part of the relay race at the end of the day. My sea came in second. The deal with winning the sea Olympics is that it decides when you get off the ship in Ft. Lauderdale. Most people wanted to win but I wanted to lose because I don’t foresee myself having any desire to get off the ship. The day ended with an awesome barbeque on the top deck, and it was probably the best barbeque ever for me because there were no bugs attacking! There were a few people in the pool cooling down, and then some of my friends jumped in in their clothes, came and got the rest of us, we jumped in in our clothes (I was wearing a bathing suit top but cotton pants), and that was fun. I don’t know how it happened, but all the sudden people decided to see how many people we could get in the pool (the pool is extremely tiny and with the probably 15-20 people already in there it was packed. People were slowly getting in the pool and it was getting more and more crowded. Everyone was cheering and trying to get more and more people in the pool. It was crazy. We even got a few professors and the dean of students to get in. It was hard to tell just how many people were in the pool at the time being inside it, but I saw pictures after and its absolutely insane. The best picture is of everyone when Party in the USA came on dancing to the song with very little space. Everyone’s hands up looks awesome though. Eventually we were told that we had to get out because they were closing the pool and as we all got out we drenched the entire deck and then the inside of the ship because of our sopping wet clothing. It was a very fun day.

I have also been going to a lot of speakers and seminars, especially this last trek of the voyage because they have had a lot about poverty and service visits and such in India and preparing yourself for the country, which I need to do. I also went to a grad school seminar which put me in a panic about what I am doing with the rest of my life.

In between all this I have been trying to use the lowest number of internet minutes possible to search for jobs in Madison and apply for them. It is amazing how vital it is to have internet. I just finished applying for one job and am keeping my fingers crossed about it!

Just a few hours to India now… We just had our longest pre-port yet and I am getting incredibly excited since everything that I hear about India sounds amazing… aside from the diseases all the bugs carry. Gross.

Namaste!

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

When we arrived in Saigon, we were all in such a rush to get to the ship that we were racing the other bus to get to the ship first. Everyone was riled up, screaming at the driver (in the nicest way possible), and cheering whenever we would pass the other bus. At one point though, they got so ahead of us that we couldn’t even see them, but ended up being okay because most of them would be through security by the time we pulled up. After getting on the ship, I threw my stuff in the room and went to grab dinner quickly on the ship since we had dinner extended for all of us from the Cambodia trip.

After running back to my room to shower and get ready to explore Vietnam nightlife, I met up with some friends and tried to decide where to go. Out of about 8 of us, only two people had been in Vietnam for the last few days and had any idea where to go. Unfortunately, he only had a vague idea of the name of the place but knew that it was on a big bar street. When we went out to the road, everyone wanted to take motorbike taxi’s, but I decided with one of my friends that since it was our first night in a foreign city and we literally had no clear idea where we were going that we would take a taxi together. Turns out, we all got lost from each other and I spent the rest of the night with the three people in the cab. We ended up finding the bar (he said saloon, the bar was called seventeen saloon), staying for a little while hoping that they would show up, and then giving up and walking around. We ended up in a very local-filled area which was really cool. There were people sitting all over the sidewalks in big groups, eating, talking, and sitting on these little stools that everyone seemed to have.

We had our first experiences crossing the street in Vietnam, which is an adventure in itself. If you have never been to Vietnam, there are motorbikes EVERYWHERE, very few traffic laws and even fewer which are followed, and there is a whole system of rules that the locals know well simply to crossing the street. You have to just GO, the drivers keep their eyes on people around them, follow your pace, set their path off of your pace, and if you hesitate, change your pace, turn around, etc. you will most likely be in trouble. It was fun though, especially during the busiest times of the day. Definitely a new experience for me. The last thing that we did that night was check out the Rex Hotel, which aside from being the location of the shuttle pick-up and drop-off to the ship, had a beautiful rooftop bar that people tended to be at from SAS before or after going out. We were hoping to find the rest of our friends there. They were not there (but it turned out that that’s where our friends had gone earlier in the evening), but we got to hang out with some other people for a little bit before it hit us all at once that we were exhausted and had been awake since 4:30 that morning. So we went back to the ship and I got a great night sleep.

The next morning I went to walk around the city with one of my friends and do some shopping since I only had a few hours free in the morning. I bought a Disney DVD pack with 140 Disney movies in it for 40 dollars and it was the most exciting purchase yet (I haven’t changed that much clearly). After that though, I had nothing on my agenda to buy and I just enjoyed walking around taking in the views and seeing everything from the new perspective of daytime in Saigon. This was good that I was enjoying it, since my friend wanted to go pick up a dress that she had made, but she had no card or address for the place and incidentally no sense of direction so we walked in circles for a long time. The only good thing about searching for the dress store turned out to be that the restaurant next door to it was absolutely delicious. I got to try pho (with an accent on the o, pronounced like the beginning of fu** without those last letters. That got funny because it sounded like the actual word when people would say it). I also tried crab meat for the first time and it was delicious (but it was also inside a fried spring roll so who knows).

That afternoon I went on a service visit to an orphanage for children with Down Syndrome, and I believe, although not stated, children with the still looming affects of Agent Orange during the war. We also visited a school for children with hearing disabilities which was incredible. I did not go to the orphanage with the awareness that the children would be disabled, so it was definitely a huge shock when I discovered that not only were these children suffering from Down Syndrome, but many of them had it in the most extreme form that I have ever seen. They were separated into different rooms depending on their ages and level of disability, and the first two rooms that we entered were definitely the worst. Children had severe physical deformities as well as the evident mental ones, but the few that were able to lift their hands to shake ours and simply smile brightened all of our days. One of the final rooms I entered at the orphanage was a classroom filled with older children who were much less disabled than the previous children that we had interacted with. We got to draw, play music and take LOTS of pictures with them. I spent most of my time with one little boy who was so unbelievably fascinated by my camera, not only the pictures of him but the way that when you moved it so did the image on the screen, and he spent about 20 minutes playing with it and not taking his eye off of it. It was adorable. The most amazing part to me was that he would watch me use it in the beginning of the visit and by the end he had picked up on how to use it himself.

Next we went to the Hyvong 8 School for the Deaf. It was the best part of my time in Vietnam. Aside from the children being extremely excited to see us, and the fact that they were adorable, it was just so nice to give them some time out of our day and see what their school was like. I was actually extremely surprised to see some of the more modern types of hearing aids, including at least one child having a cochlear implant (for my com dis major friends reading this). We spent not nearly enough time with them that afternoon and that was definitely sad. It was surprising that these children were the easiest to communicate with even though they couldn’t hear. It made sense once I thought about it, since using hand motions and a little bit of sign language that was used in both ASL and VSL which at this point us SASers were used to using and the students have to have used all their lives. They were also extremely excited at the sight of the cameras and one little boy was literally running around the room posing for the different cameras.

I went back to the ship following that lovely afternoon and got ready to meet up with my friends. We ended up eating dinner on the ship again because we were waiting for some people and we were hungry (not to worry, we had a real Vietnamese meal much later that night). Then we went to the Rex Hotel for a drink so that we could wait a little longer for some friends since that was where the shuttle dropped everyone from the ship off. I had been there the night before but wasn’t completely aware of how crazy expensive it was compared to the rest of Vietnam since I didn’t eat or drink anything so we didn’t stay there for too long. When we left we went to go walk around towards the night market. We kept running into people along the way and I find it so funny how even though we are in this large city we can’t manage to ever fully get away from SAS. My sweater was stolen in some form or another- we stopped to talk to our friends, I distinctly remember thinking about how something was going to happen to my sweater even though it was tied around the strap to my bag AND I was holding onto it. A few minutes later we stopped and I realized it was gone. We were less than a block away from where I had last seen it, and so I walked back but didn’t see it anywhere and there were all these shops set up along the street that had people sitting outside and one of them was smirking when he saw me looking around for something. So there are two possibilities- I somehow dropped it on the floor and THEN it was stolen, or some sneaky person managed to grab it when I wasn’t paying attention. In conclusion, I lost my sweater (not anything expensive though not to worry). [side note, the next morning I was walking down that same street and was looking into the stores to see if they were selling it] Anyway, after we got to the night market we decided to sit and grab some food before looking around. It was a delicious meal and I don’t know why I never have tried Vietnamese food before at home (to my knowledge). Some of my friends went back to the ship while some of us stayed and looked at some souvenirs. We ended off the night taking a motorbike taxi back to the ship- one of the scariest experiences of my life. I focused solely on the drivers helmet so that I couldn’t see the road and would freak out every time we sped up or we turned (looking back on it, they were driving almost painfully slow and there was no one on the road compared to other times of the day that I had been outside). I was happy to be able to say that I did it.

The next morning I woke up at 6:15 to get ready for my field program to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cu Chi village was a large war zone for many, many years, including before the Vietnam War. The people in the village had built/dug these tiny path of tunnels all over this area that they lived in for two or three years during the Vietnam War, and also fought from there. We walked through the tiny tunnels (we are much bigger than the average Vietnamese so it was interesting), and saw the underground areas that were used as a meeting room, kitchen, hospital, and a few other things. I had trouble being in the tunnel for just a few minutes with no fresh air, no light and cramped spacing so I cannot imagine doing it for so long. However, we were also shown the weaponry that they used, which while it was not as technologically advanced as American weapons, it was gruesomely displayed. Our tour guide laughed when he called one of set of spikes that would swing at you when you opened the door ‘the baby killer’. There were images on the wall of people falling on the spikes with blood everywhere and the entire thing was just extremely different than anything I have ever experienced. There was also a video that we watched that was all about how proud they are of how many Americans the people of Cu Chi killed. So it was definitely an interesting morning. That afternoon following a quick lunch, I went to the War Remnants Museum, which was incredibly upsetting. The path that they suggested following took us first into a room with pictures and some details about the background of the war, highlighted a few American soldiers and journalists. There was a part of the one of the rooms that was all about the protesting that countries around the world were doing. Then there were two rooms that had a lot of pictures showing the affects of Agent Orange and the children living with major disabilities and deformities because of their parent’s exposure to it. It highlighted that the chemical used in Agent Orange was dioxin, and that it is the most dangerous form of it was used. A tablespoon of it could kill a city with a population of 8 million. It was incredibly disturbing to learn about it. There were a lot of pictures that were sad to see at first, and then you would read the captions and it would be even worse (like a little boy being tortured in order to get information on his parents). Finally, we went to look at the “tiger cages,” which were these tiny prison cages that were basically barbed wire- it was small space inside and they would stick a bunch of people in them and they could only lie down. Also, highly disturbing. The only bright part of the afternoon was in one of the rooms that had large pictures of children affected by Agent Orange. The person who took the pictures and wrote the captions had some pretty amazing things to say about the children and other people in the pictures. One was “This small house overflows with vitality from the love [the sister] shows her brother, enabling me to understand that although there are countless miseries in our lives, life is worth living to the fullest extent possible.” Another one said, “Tung cannot speak, and can only drink with the help of others. Yet the keenness in his eyes showed me that he is still shrewd and comprehending. It was extraordinary to see his eyes gleam with the thirst of life of a normal person. I felt that there were important lessons to be learned about life from what could be seen in his eyes.” I wish that I was able to upload the pictures that these were referring you so that you could understand even more how amazing it was to read those words.

I had taken a moped to the museum, with my friend taking video that started with me screaming, “I am panicking, I am panicking!” That was funny. Then we took another one to the market that we were going to, which should have been the most terrifying due to the way that the driver was swerving in and out of traffic and crossing streets, but I was used to it and got to video it myself. It’s a pretty fun video. I do screech at one point though. Anyway, we went to the Ben Tanh Market, one of the biggest ones in Vietnam, and bought some more souvenirs. In case you were wondering, I already have almost an entire suitcase filled with souvenirs for all my friends and family. It was a crowded and smelly market though so we didn’t stay for too long. Since it was getting late, we headed back to the ship to write our postcards and send them before on-ship time! We spent a lot of time outside that night checking out the interesting views from our ship because we weren’t leaving Vietnam until the following morning due to port rules. I was sad to say goodbye the next morning.

The biggest difference that I noticed from other countries is that there were a lot more stores in buildings than on the street or in big marketplaces. It seemed much more western in a lot of ways. Vietnam is definitely a port that I can see myself returning to fairly soon, because of the little time that I had there and the infinite amount of things that you can do and the fact that the people were incredibly nice, friendly, and the culture hits you right in the face from the moment you enter. Now we are on our way to India, which I sure will be even more of a culture shock and I can’t WAIT! It is definitely one of the countries that I was most excited for before the trip and that excitement has not gone away. I have a post to write about some of the things happening on the ship lately, but after that the next post will be I am sure pages and pages about it so get prepared!

Tam biet!

Siem Riep, Cambodia

When we arrived in Siem Riep we immediately went to the hotel. From the bus ride there, you could tell that the city of Siem Riep was different from Phnom Penh; it was smaller in terms of the number of people that you saw outside and in the total size of the city (population and area), but also it seemed almost immediately poorer. It was also immediately different that there was a large divide in this city between poor and less poor, educated and not-educated. For one, there were differences in buildings as we went along the roads. The thing that stood out most, though, was that we passed children on the streets wearing barely anything, some of them begging, and then passed school children heading home from school on their bikes and mopeds in nice and clean uniforms. I thought that that was very interesting since we did not witness anything like that in Phnom Penh: everyone seemed to be on the same level.

The hotel that we stayed at was beyond incredible. From the second that we pulled up to it we were amazed by how much it stood out from the rest of the city. There was a nice restaurant, bar, pool and spa inside. We immediately all ran to our rooms, changed into bathing suits and went out to jump in the pool during the hour we had between our arrival and dinner. The pool temperature was warmer than bath water but incredibly refreshing. We stayed in for a while and it was hard to get out back into the sticky heat of Cambodia. The spa was out by the pool and a ton of people were going over to sign up for massages and pedicures, to the point where they ran out of staff and were calling around the city trying to find more people. I signed up for a massage as well.

That night we ate dinner in this huge barn-like restaurant that had a huge buffet and a show following dinner. There were about 100 SASers from two different Cambodia trips. The show ended up being some Japanese dancing, and people were leaving from all different parts of the room pretty early on. About a half hour before we were supposed to leave, our bus leader came over and asked us if we really wanted to stay or if the bus left at that point we would go with it. Everyone left except for two people. It was really not very good. The bus dropped most of us all in the downtown area by some more night markets (I slowly was learning that night markets are huge there). I walked around with some friends and did some shopping, and watched one of my friends giggle hysterically at a fish foot massage. The fish foot massages were EVERYWHERE. Basically, you stick your feet in a tank filled with these little tiny fish that nibble at your dry skin and “massage” your feet. But it seriously tickles- I stuck my hand in to try it out and knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. It was two dollars for twenty minutes and a beer so if you could handle it it was definitely worth it. Since I had my massage I headed back to the hotel on a tuck tuck (pulled by motorcycle), it was slightly terrifying. To give you some idea about just how nice our hotel was, the tour guide had told me to give no more than a dollar for the ride from the market to the hotel. So, I go up to the group of drivers lined up and said one dollar for the ride. They asked where I was going and I showed the card and they looked at me and said, “you are staying here! You can afford more than that!” However, all that I had on me was one US dollar and real (their currency) that was 50 cents worth, aside from bigger bills that I didn’t want to break unless absolutely necessary. Eventually I got them to accept the dollar and a half for the ride but it was pretty interesting.

My massage was… interesting. Every person that got a massage in the last few countries (which is just about everyone on the ship) had some weird story to tell. They definitely give different massages here. At one point she stuck her fingers in my ear, at another I felt her scratching something on my back which I later saw was a scab. I was also extremely ticklish and kept laughing. They put two people in a room so my friend that was in the room with me said that all he kept hearing was me laughing. Woops. After that weird experience I went to my room, showered and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up at 4:45am to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Everyone on my trip but two people chose to do it, which was surprising. It was a really cool experience. We first got day passes with our pictures on it since we would be spending the rest of the day there. Then, we walked in complete darkness towards the site that we would watch from, pretty much directly in front. The only thing that we could really make out were a few of the structures and the water. As the sun rose, we could make out more and more of Angkor Wat. We first just saw the silhouette, and then slowly the entirety of Angkor Wat. It was very exciting. After about an hour and a half there and a lot of pictures trying to capture the sight, we left to grab breakfast back at the hotel.

Following breakfast we went on a tour of Ta Prohm, also known as the temple with the trees. The trees are extremely large ficus trees that were absolutely beautiful. They stood tall above the temple, with its roots coiling in and out of doorways and the different structures and with the sunlight hitting them shone a silvery glow. They were definitely a sight to see. The pictures that we tried to take to capture the views did not nearly do it justice.

We then went back to Angkor Wat to actually tour inside of it and see it in the full daylight. As we were walking down the long path, these monkeys started appearing out of nowhere, which of course meant that we were stopping to take pictures and play with them. There were older monkeys, baby monkeys, sick monkeys, etc. My favorite thing to see was how smart the monkeys were. One was sitting by a bunch of water bottles and picking it up to drink out of it. If there was a bottle that they couldn’t drink out of, they would pour it upside down and drink the water off the ground. Then, some of them were peeling bananas to eat them which was crazy. There was one monkey that was breastfeeding her baby, and at one point got scared and went to run away- the baby held on underneath her! It was all amazing. Not after long, we needed to go and explore Angkor Wat before our time there ran out. It was very beautiful and incredible that it was created so long ago. We walked around for a while just looking around, and then went to check out the little market along the outside of it. I bought some postcards, and took a bunch of pictures of these adorable little children playing with the pipes by the water. They were all around three or four, and we on opposite sides of the open pipes talking and listening to each other. I thought it was so cute.

When we went to Angkor Wat we went to the hotel for lunch and to check out. We then went on to our last stop in Cambodia, Angkor Prohm or Bayon, the temple with the faces. This was pretty incredible and possibly my favorite stop of the day. All over the temple there were these carved faces made out of stone. There were just tons of them all over the place and I couldn’t get over the fact that it was so old. We got some fun and funny pictures with them and all just really walked around for a little bit. Everyone was incredibly overheated and exhausted and we spent a lot of time just sitting around by the exit trying to cool down. On our walk over the bus we saw one last place that we just quickly walked through. It was called the elephant walk or something along those lines and there were all these stones elephant trunks lining one side. There was a girl sitting on top of one of the wall who at first glance looked like she was talking to herself while eating something out of a little cup. Then I noticed that there was a little boy relaxing and hanging in the tree above her head. Crazy.

When we arrived at the airport we noticed a Dairy Queen that SAS quickly attacked. I don’t think that they had ever had so many customers at once. It was delicious though. We then went through immigration, security, etc. hung around the terminal for a little before boarding the quick one hour flight back to Saigon.

I was really sad to leave Cambodia and hope that I get the opportunity to return one day and experience even more of the country than I did. It is a truly amazing place with some great people and we were so well received by everyone that we interacted with. I had an incredible time there.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I woke up early as we were riding down the Saigon River pulling into Vietnam as the sun rose. We were surrounded by forest on both sides and the trees looked absolutely beautiful paired with the rising sun and the reflection in the water. Every so often we would pass these little fishing boats and that really gave us an introduction to Vietnam. It was so incredible that I was woken up that morning before my alarm even went off by my roommate looking outside and screaming oh, wow! We were both freaking out about how cool it looked. I went upstairs to meet up with my friend and take some pictures and it was just so great to see. I really couldn’t get over it. The temperature at the time was great and I got really excited since all we had been hearing was that it would be awfully hot, and then I realized that it was 6:30 in the morning.

We went through immigration and then had a quick diplomatic briefing about the state of the country and what we shouldn’t say and do. I found out I couldn’t blog about the political state of Vietnam and so that was obviously a huge bummer since I love talking politics… or not. I went out to the side deck where you could see a bunch of parents lined up outside the gangway that were in Vietnam for the parent trip. My family was not in the crowd because they don’t love me… or because I didn’t think it was necessary for them to come. There weren’t very many parents and it wouldn’t have been a great time for them to come anyway. I then packed up last minute stuff for my trip to Cambodia that left that morning.

When we left for my trip we literally got right on the bus outside of the ship, so we didn’t get to walk around Vietnam at all. All we got to see of it before departing on the plane was the drive through Ho Chi Minh City, which was really cool to see, and the aerial view from the window of the plane, also cool. From the bus we got to see all the motorcycles, buildings, parks, people, etc. and really got a good taste of what we would be returning to two days later. Security at the airport was really interesting. The immigration desk was completely bare- just an old computer and one other machine. It was very technology-lacking. After going through China’s intense immigration screening this was very different to experience. Everything in the airport was priced in US dollars which was new for us, but we would soon learn that US dollars are much more widely accepted and requested than Cambodian currency and even Vietnamese currency. The views during takeoff were pretty incredible and it was interesting seeing that and then seeing the views in Cambodia, which were surprisingly very different. Cambodia was much more barren. The plane ride was about a half hour and potentially the shortest plane ride I have ever had (I once flew from Minneapolis to Madison and I remember that being very short too).

We excitedly left the airport to enter the city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city. It was much different than any place I have been thus far in my life, including Ho Chi Minh City. You noticed the poverty immediately as well as the smaller city size and much lower population than we have seen in the other cities. The first place that we went to was the National Museum. There were a bunch of historical statues, but due to not really being able to hear our tour guide not many people on my trip could tell you much about it. Then we went on a sunset cruise down the Mekong River. This was really amazing. We got on the boat along a natural dock of mud and grass, in an area where a lot of locals were hanging around this large sidewalk-esque park. It took us a while to pull away since we were stuck in the mud but when we finally did we got to see these awesome views of the streets from the middle of the river. You could learn so much about Phnom Penh and Cambodia’s culture just from looking at the buildings and people. Along the streets were a lot of short, crowded buildings that were a mix of houses and businesses, and we saw a lot of extremely undernourished, underweight men on these old boats on the water. It was interesting. Finally, we rode past people living in these shacks on the water and learned that they were the illegal immigrants living in Cambodia. Surprisingly, even though it was on the water, they had electricity and we saw a television on in one of the homes. However, it was all open and there was no privacy and it was definitely an incredibly poverty-stricken area. It was sad to see. After we got off the boat, we ran into a large group of locals doing aerobics on the large sidewalk park, and of course everyone joined in. It was pretty awesome.

Next we went to the Palm Tree Orphanage, sadly my first orphanage visit of the trip, so I was very anxious to go since my visits with children in these countries are what I was most looking forward to experiencing. This orphanage is supported by Cambodia’s Hope, a SAS alumni-run organization. We went fairly late at night so it was hard to see the entire orphanage but it seemed like a fairly nice place given the other places we had seen in Phnom Penh up to that point. From the second that we arrived at the gates of the orphanages, the kids ran up to us, grabbed our hands and started showing us around. They showed us where they played, where they learned, some of the things that they had made and so on. I met some truly adorable children that I really wanted to just take back with me. They were smiling and full of so much love that it just broke my heart that they were there. One of my favorite children at the orphanage ran up to me and gave me the biggest hug. He was an extremely tiny boy but gave such a heart-felt hug that I was completely taken aback. He had some sort of mental disability but was one of the happiest children I have ever seen and couldn’t stop clapping his hands and hugging us. It was precious. We played a few cute circle games that had all the kids giggling in the most adorable ways possible. Since the children that I interacted with either didn’t know much English or were incredibly shy we didn’t talk much but there was so much smiling around me that I honestly learned how a smile can say a thousand words. Saying goodbye was the most difficult part of the night and it was so incredibly difficult to just turn around and walk away from them to go back to our nice hotel, then to our nice ship with our friends and eventually to our amazing families in a few months. As depressing as it was though, I had to keep reminding myself that our visit gave them just a few hours of more smiles than they would have gotten without it and that had to be enough for now. A lot of the discussion that has been going on currently back on the ship is about how it is so hard to visit these countries that have so much poverty and stay at five star hotels and have these incredible opportunities. A staff member on the ship said something in response to this at a pre-port reflection the other night along the lines of how you can’t let your guilt eat you up. Instead, you have to appreciate the fact that you have the privilege to do all these and look at it in the most positive way possible [not a direct quote, she said much more, much better, much more eloquently, but that’s what I got out of it].

We went to dinner afterwards, there were lizards on the ceilings and ants all over the bathroom, then went to the hotel to check in, and finally left to check out the night market. We took a tuck tuck (rickshaw) ride there which was fun. There was a concert at the market and that was funny to watch, I bought a few things and learned that bargaining is not as much fun and cheap as it is in China, and then they started to close the market and we went back to the hotel to sleep.

Early the next morning we woke up in preparation for a rough morning. We were to spend the first few hours of the morning learning about the Cambodia genocide that took place in the 70’s and see some of the sites in which it happened. I don’t particularly remember ever learning about the Cambodian genocide led by Pol Pot, the most harshly communist leader I have ever heard about. Within four years he killed a few million people because they were “involved in free-market activities” which encompassed all educated people and he wanted those that lived in the city to relocate to the countryside to work on farms and labor projects. He, as the head of the Khmer Rouge, used many incredibly gruesome and violent methods to kill off anyone from babies to old men and women. The first place we went to was the genocide museum, which was a school once upon a time before being used as a jail to torture all those that the group opposed. There were pictures of all the people that had been held there, some pictures more disturbing than others simple headshots. It was difficult to walk through. Out of the thousands of people that were held in this jail, SEVEN people survived. After that we went to one of the killing fields. There were 376 total killing fields according to our guide, which is where they would take people to kill them. The one was incredibly saddening to walk around.At first glance it looked like an average large field with some trees, but then you would see that one of the trees was what they used to slam the babies and toddlers on to kill them, or one of the small circles off the path contained a few hundred bodies of naked woman and children. Mass graves were labeled all over the place. There was one very beautiful building that when you walked up to it you noticed that the entire thing consisted of shelf upon shelf of skulls that were discovered in the area that the building now stood on. There were so many awful things that we learned about how they killed people at these sites that I am not even going to put them on here. What is unbelievable about these killings are that because it is such a small country, so much of the population died and the majority of the population is extremely young. It is similar in Vietnam. Even our tour guide lost his parents and remembers some of what was going on as he was eight years old at the time. There was a very tense moment on the bus after, mostly my fault, because my friends behind me started comparing genocides- or more specifically the Cambodian genocide and the Holocaust. One of them was saying that he thought that what Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge did was worse because of the reasoning for it… I turned around and said that you can’t compare them, that you just have to know that they were both unbelievably awful events in history but very, very different. Neither can be justified as BETTER than the other.

Luckily, we moved onto lighter notes after the killing fields and went to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. They were beautiful pieces of architecture and had some amazing statues inside. There was one that was covered in diamonds and made out of gold. It was exquisite. There was a wishing tree in the area, where people had written wishes all over its leaves. I wrote a wish but I was reading through some of them and there was one in huge letters that said “I WANT MONEY!” After walking around there some more, we went to lunch. When we were leaving lunch we noticed that they had a little pond with someone’s future meal in it, a baby whale. We asked if it was okay to touch it and they said okay so I did. It was very scaly and slimy. Following this, two smaller but scary looking fish almost went to protect the one I pet and swam on either side of him. It was pretty cool.

Next we went to an extremely warm and crowded market. There were a bunch of different sections that you had to search for the entrances to and it was like a fun maze trying to find our way all over it. The worst about this market compared to the ones in China and Japan, is that because of the heat all the foods that they have in them smell up the ENTIRE MARKET. Wasn’t the most pleasant of smells either. When we were bored of shopping and getting way too hot, we decided to check out the air-conditioned mall across the street. This was really no different than any American mall I have ever been in, except that the DVD store was selling DVDs for a $1.50 each. We also got some amazing ice cream.

After spending some more time in the mall, we left for the bus to the airport. It was interesting taking a domestic flight in Cambodia, since the terminal wasn’t as nice as the original duty-free international terminal we saw on arrival in Phnom Penh. There was literally one café, it was a nice one but it was such an unbelievably small terminal. We walked outside to get on the plane, which was a tiny propeller (on the outside) plane. There were 60 of us on the trip and we took up all but three or four seats on this plane. It was pretty crazy. Then we set off for Siem Riep, home to Angkor Wat!

A lot of what I got out of the Phnom Penh section of the Cambodia trip was grim reminders of why I wanted to go on Semester at Sea. I knew it would be difficult for me but I also knew that I wanted more than anything to learn to appreciate the things that I have in my life more. It has been completely putting things into perspective for me about my life and the little things that I take for granted on a daily basis. Our bus leader, my LLC, has two children with her on the trip that are eight and five. I asked her if she thinks that they will remember any of the trip and she responded that even if they don’t, she hopes that it impacts them enough to stay with them. I thought that was a really good thing to think about with all of us on SAS. While the memories are great, it is so much more important for all these places to influence our futures, the way we live the rest of our lives, and the things that we do with the rest of our lives.