Let’s jump right in, woo! China did not make my list of top 3 countries (Right now held by Namibia, Vietnam, and Malaysia, respectively- though I have very high hopes for Japan), but it was definitely a blast. I traveled to Beijing with my friends Carla and Mark (adorable couple), Carla’s roommate Jaime and her friend Sara, plus Mark’s roommate Josh and their friend Matt. They’re all my friends, but there’s the specific rundown for those of you who feel I haven’t been giving you enough social information.
China was a challenge. It was a good challenge in my opinion, but I think others, a little spoiled by our easy time finding English speakers in all the previous countries, found it less positive and more frustrating. The most challenging aspect was the fact that NO ONE speaks English. This was not a problem in, say, Brazil, where Portuguese is relatively easy to pick up and you can get by with decent Spanish. In China, Mandarin and Cantonese aren’t exactly romance languages, and reading the characters is a feat even some Chinese people can’t do. The most English tragedy…okay. I got up to do stuff in the middle of that sentence and I have NO clue what it was going to say. “The most English tragedy is Romeo & Juliet?”…”The most English tragedy is running out of tea?”…I don’t know. If you can comment on what should have been the best sentence, I will give you a special gift when I get home. Give me until then to decide what it is. Probably a baked good, because god do I ever miss baking.
Back to China. Language barrier was tough. We figured out ways around this, like having the hotel concierge write where we wanted to go in Mandarin beforehand. This did not always work out, as cab drivers had the justSOfun habit of staring at the piece of paper like someone wrote “These people think your mom is a stripper,” on it, then sometimes nodding and saying, “(insert Chinese characters here),” or, even more graciously, simply going, “No,” and driving away. OH THE ENTERTAINMENT. So, having at least 7 people at all times, and therefore hailing two cabs, is no easy feat on the streets of Beijing. One cab drove up to us and then drove away laughing. Glad I could pay the fun forward and give a Chinese dude a good laugh with no effort required. Of course, there were friendly cab drivers, too. One talked to us the whole way to the Temple of Heaven- unfortunately, as he was speaking Mandarin, all we could do was laugh and nod confusedly.
But before Beijing, there was Hong Kong. The ship docked next to a mall, so when we disembarked, we disembarked into the couture kids’ section. This was a giant and rather upscale mall, including D&G Children, Chloe Junior, and all sorts of absurdly expensive baby clothing. There was other unusually upscale stuff too, my favorite of which was PIZZA HUT. This was the swankiest Pizza Hut I have ever seen. It looked like it should have sold $50 steaks and $14 plates of pommes frites, not greasy pan pizzas. The first day a few VB friends and I set out to explore. We really just spent the day walking around Hong Kong- our intent was to go to the art museum, but it was closed on Thursdays (random). Our ship was docked on mainland HK, Kowloon, but we took the ferry to Hong Kong Island, where all the action is. We wandered up Hollywood Rd., went on a very long people-mover, saw a deli with a “Oba-macaroni & cheese” special, elbowed our way through a market street, saw a really weird cut of fish wherein a piece was still throbbing, went in the HK equivalent of Pleasant Surprise (favorite sighting- a dish towel that says “Pandas are the Most Cuddly,” I almost got it for you Michelle but it was way too expensive for a dish towel, sorry), and lunched at a superdelicious create-your-own burger place.
It was hot in HK, and as we walked in our attempts to find the Victoria Peak Tram, we were sweating like crazy, Vietnam style. Sidenote: It felt SO. VERY. GOOD. To be in Beijing where it was about 40*. I never thought I would miss the cold, but I would rather be in the cold than in the sweat-through-your-shirts heat & humidity of good old rainy-season SE Asia. Anyway, with the help of a friendly cab driver, we found the tram and rode it up to the top of- you guessed it- Victoria Peak. The view was gorgeous. We watched the sun set over the HK skyline and took lots of touristy pictures and got gelato that was far too expensive. We took the ferry back to Kowloon just in time for the light show. That’s right, the light show. Every night, Hong Kong Island’s building light up in a frenzy of lasers, spots, and rainbow flashing seizure-givers in a SWEET light show set to music. It is really bizarre to see a city make itself into a light show, but also incredibly cool.
That night was pretty amusing. We went in search of a nice chill bar in which to get a beer and some snacks, and instead found the following: First, a German beerfest in the Marco Polo Hotel. That was almost over and very expensive, so we moved on to Ladies Night at Zaza, also expensive but the first (and only, for us) drink was free. The kicker with Zaza was that it was some James Bond/Bollinger champagne promotion party, so there was a Cantonese fashion show with girls prancing around in gold and making spy motions. It was really uninteresting, but we thought it was funny that we managed to go to a beerfest and a fashion show in a two-hour span. We hit up McD’s for a magical western chicken mcnugget or two and went to bed.
I have definitely reached my foreign-food quota. Japan doesn’t count because I ADORE sushi and anything even slightly noodle related, but China was a place where I caved and ate a fair amount of things like BK and TCBY and other such acronyms. I even ate KFC, which I don’t think I’ve eaten at home since age 9. Desperation smells like a “Zinger Burger” and hot wings.
Anyway, the second day in HK was Tai Chi, Tea and Dim Sum. Dim sum was yummy, Tai Chi almost made me fall asleep but was actually really cool and surprisingly energizing (despite that whole sleepy thing), and I spent way too much money on tea and tea-related items that are a shared Christmas present for us, Mommy. My favorite dim sum item was a tasty bbq pork thing that is best described as steamed wonderbread outside with pork sloppy joe inside. It was a delight. I got a really cool loose tea press at “The Best Tea House.” That’s actually its name. It was really a lovely place and a deserved moniker.
After my morning/afternoon of culture, I met up with Carla/Mark, Sara, Jaime (jay-mee, not hi-mee like a latino boy), Josh and Matt for our flight to Beijing. After taking advantage of the free wifi to book a hotel room, we got on the plane- I was last, as I was literally booking the hotel room as I walked down the jetway. All went well, there was a full and delicious meal on our 2-hour plane ride, and they played Wall-E, which you all know I adore. We got off and set about the business of finding our way to the Zhongan Hotel. Frugal students, we opted to take the shuttle bus for Y16 to Beijing station, then catch a cab to our hotel. However, once at Beijing station (bus ride involved hearing “My Heart Will Go On”, America’s everywhere), we could not find a cab who would take us to our hotel, the address of which was written in Mandarin on a piece of paper. It was 1am and very cold, and the concierge pointed us in the general direction of the hotel, so we started walking. On our way, we found an elderly Chinese gentleman on a bike who kindly showed us the way to our hotel (about eight blocks) and then requested Y100, about $18. We talked him down to Y30/$5 because paying $15 for someone to walk you somewhere is absurd. The last two blocks involved going down a tiny, dark, deserted alleyway with no lights and no hotels/buildings, just little shack places. Once we actually reached the Zhong’an, it was a cute little courtyard hotel tucked away in a real Chinese neighborhood, which, barring our first late-night foray, was not at all sketchy. As it was late, we just went right to bed, ready to wake up early for a sojourn to the Forbidden City.
Sojourn we did, although not that early. We booked our evening’s activity- an acrobatics show- and our next day’s tour to the great wall, then headed in search of brunch. We found it at Chengdu, a place with a chili pepper icon that so resembled Chipotle that we continued to call the restaurant Chipotle. I had amazing chicken with spicy sauce, dumplings galore, and fried rice for about $3. Good start. We walked to the Marriott and caught a cab to the Forbidden City. It was cool, but was made a lot more useful by the GPS-led audio guides we bought. If not for those, I think it would’ve been your average series of old buildings, but the guide told us all about what each building’s purpose was in the dynasty days, plus interesting architectural notes and factoids. We went through the buildings to the other side, checked out the giant portrait of good ol’ Mao-ey Z, then skipped across the street to Tiananmen Square. We just looked around and took in the history, also taking the requisite jumpshot- if there’s one thing I’ve learned here, it’s that SAS loves the jumpshot.
With a few hours left before our acrobat show, we went to the Temple of Heaven. We couldn’t go inside because of a ceremony, but we walked around the beautiful gardens and absorbed the fact that we were finally in a country where coats were welcome. It was nice to be in a place where it was COLD and autumnal. The park and temple were both really beautiful and nature-tastic.
The acrobatics show that night was FANTASMAGORICAL. Seriously. The finale involved 12 people on a bike. One bike, I tell you! There were so many ridiculous feats of human agility, it was like Cirque du Soleil on crack. It was really cool to see, but kind of funny because it was in a theater that was more than vaguely reminiscent of a high school where PHS Chorus performed. After that, we headed over to the main bar street, where we headed into a place where the singers asked us where we were from, then yelled , “Oh, America! Barack Obama,” to which we yelled a very vigorous “OBAMA!!!,” an act which earned us a free popcorn from the Italian girls seated next to us.
The next day was GREAT WALL DAY, and my 21st birthday! It was a super terrific day, as we went to the Ming Tombs (sorry to say, these were boring and entirely uneventful) and a Chinese doctor who said I needed to exercise more and told me I needed $160 pills (to help me exercise more?). Really those were the only crappy bits, the wall was amazing! It is crazy to know you are walking on 2400 years of history, that you are walking on something that has been around over 10x the entire history of the United States. The Great Wall is over 6,000 miles long. That is crazy. You could walk to California and back on that wall. We took copious amounts of pictures and pushed our way through a million Chinese people to get to the top, as this was not rude because the Chinese have no concept of personal space. I’m not being rude, it’s completely true. I definitely had a “How lucky am I?” moment staring at all the miles of wall before me.
That night, we celebrated my birthday at the Golden Jaguar, a magical all-you-can-eat-and-drink-yes-drink buffet. It was sweet- I had another ton of dumplings, roast duck, sushi, and all sorts of tasty confections.
We spent our last Beijing day in the Land of the Olympics! We took a dubious cab (because he didn’t know why we wanted to go there, he wasn’t a dubious guy, he was actually pretty cool) to the Olympic Village, then wandered around to the Bird’s Nest. It is huge and silver and nesty and irony and AWESOME. It is so cool to see close up, especially because I had major Olympics fever this summer. We saw the Watercube next door too, which looked like the Bubble at the Newport Athletic Club, but more architecturally sound and pretty. It really looked like a building made of iridescent pinky-blue bubbles, with water running down the glass windowpanes. There was a sweet building a block away called the Torch Building, the top of which looked- well, should have looked like a torch, but really looked like a combination of Elvis’s hair and a frozen yogurt. We hopped back in some cabs and headed to the airport for our flight to Shanghai.
Shanghai was pretty uneventful. I stayed in that night, as I was super tired and not in the mood to deal with another new place. The next day, Carrie, Sam and I went to get Japan Rail passes and ate a fabulous lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. I know, I know, I really should’ve eaten Chinese food, but that Thai pizza satisfied my SOUL. Shanghai looked cool, but I really just didn’t have the energy or wherewithal to really explore and discover an entire giant business-based city in less than 12 hours.
Now here’s the not-so-fun part: While we were in Hong Kong, a student was hit by a drunk driver and killed. His name was Kurt, and while I didn’t know him personally, everybody said he was a really nice, genuine and intelligent guy. We just had a memorial service for him tonight (November 20, obviously I’m a bit slow with the blog post), and it was great to hear about what a great person Kurt was, but heartbreaking, because such a young life was lost. I have a hard time dealing with the idea that he will never graduate or get a job or get married or have a family. I feel like the shipboard community dealt with it in a really gentle, respectful way, by celebrating Kurt’s life instead of solely mourning his death. Kurt’s death made me even more aware of just how lucky I am to be here on this trip, and here on this earth. I can’t imagine the pain his parents must feel knowing that the time they said goodbye to their kid in the Bahamas would be the last time they saw him alive. Please send up a prayer for Kurt’s family and friends, or, if you’re not the praying type, just send some good healing vibes and thoughts.
Okay. I know it’s hard to segue into anything happy from that, but I will do my best. I would definitely come back to China, but it’s honestly not at the top of my list, especially after going to Japan, where I am determined to live at some point. More on that next post, which I shall write directly and probably post at the same time as this one. On the next “Voyage of the Me-me”, our intrepid heroine deals with the idea of returning home and her feelings on the journey as a whole!
24 November 2008
05 November 2008
Lesson Eleven: How to Post in Anachronistic Order (alternate title: How To Rest, Relax & Run Rampant in the Rain)
Malaysia was a refreshing respite after the hectic and mentally/emotionally taxing whirling dervish known as India. I still feel like I haven’t adequately processed that, or indeed anywhere I’ve been, and while I’m positive this experience will stay with me forever, I am simultaneously petrified that I will forget even the tiniest things that happened. I think that is why I write such long and detailed blog entries, because while I’m sure you find my life fascinating, I probably find it more fascinating than you do, and want to use this as a memory aid in the future.
I have been feeling a little bad that I have been basically just giving a play-by-play of what I do and not what I feel or what happens aboard the ship, but there’s just so much that goes on in every possible sector that I have to pick something to focus on. So far, I have been brought to tears several times, bowled over by the realization that this is happening, that this world traversing is my life, and how utterly blessed I am to have the supportive family, financial means, personal stamina and general beautiful life that I have. I don’t know if I will ever find a way to repay you, Mom and Dad, for making this trip possible; or to thank you enough, Gram & Pop, for the amazing sendoff gifts you gave me. I know I will certainly spend many years trying.
Enough sentiment, let’s get to the play-by-play! Malaysia is AMAZING. I would go back in a heartbeat. Penang is super safe- I never felt threatened or bothered in any way- and the people are all friendly and ready to have a conversation. Several factors helped Malaysia’s natural charms shine ever more: the relaxed atmosphere and lack of tight time budgets and my fabulous travel partners, Katey, Eleanor and Danica. We had so much fun basically hanging around and eating, because there is no better way to experience a culture than to eat its food. Seriously.
Malaysia is semi-multicultural, albeit not to the degree of the mostly-immigrant US. Malaysia has three main ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian. The Chinese and Indians have been in Malaysia for centuries, but some still feel that the Malays have all the power, and that they are treated as second-class citizens. Most Chinese and Indian Malaysians have never been to their ancestors’ home countries. The racism was never apparent to any of us, but it is very clear that neighborhoods and restaurants (no fusion) are separated by culture.
Day 1: I went on an FDP to a drug rehab center, an experience that was far less dry and far more rewarding than I had expected. I am a total psych nerd, so I obviously enjoyed it, but what made it really cool was that instead of taking us on a lame tour of the grounds, we were able to speak with and quasi-interview several of the patients at the facility. This place, while it was clearly a clean, well-maintained and quality facility, was VERY different from a rehab center you’d experience in the US.
There was a staff of only 7 for nearly 400 inmates (they called them ‘inmates’, not ‘patients’, another difference I will return to in but a few sentences), and none of them were professionally educated in psychology, just a training program for that specific facility. They followed an 8-step program (that none of us had never heard of, even Dr. Cargill) based on a center in NY, and had a minimum stay of 24 months, although most inmates are let out earlier for success and good behavior. The patients are called inmates because it is a government-mandated facility, and as such is more of a penal system solely for drug addicts. While we got differing answers from the staff and the inmates, we eventually eked out of them that the recidivism (the do-you-come-back-for-more) rate was about 70%, which is fairly high, but not surprising considering that it is a mandated and not voluntary facility.
The man I spoke with was 52 and was on his second go, having been in the center in 1995 and then clean for the next 12 years. He said that the most dangerous thing for him to have once released was free time. In the center, the inmates are up and occupied from 5:30am to 11pm, and once released, there is little to no follow-up counseling, job placement, or training to ensure success outside of the facility. Malaysia is trying to eradicate drugs COMPLETELY by 2015 (a lofty goal in my and my interviewee’s opinion), and there are government mandated rehab facilities all over the country. Most addicts (that are convicted, at least) are men, and there is only one center each for women, juveniles, and voluntary admittance.
After that illuminating field trip, I headed back to the ship, then back out to grab some dinner. This going back on the ship then leaving again may sound simple to you, but it was not. We had to do something called “tendering”, which meant our ship was anchored in the harbor, not docked, and we therefore had to use one of our lifeboats as a baby ferry to take us the 8 or so minutes from ship to shore. These boats left the ship on the hour from 7am-1am, and left the shore on the half hour from 7:30 to 1:30. Luckily, we only have/had to tender in Malaysia.
Dinner that night meant Chinese food, and then out to the clubs on Penang Rd. because it was ladies night. Ladies night was a lot less awesome than it sounds, and we got on the midnight tender to beat the river of SAS kids that was inevitably going to come in on the 1am. Dinner was REAL Chinese food, which meant tasty duck and fried rice and the strangest “dessert” I have ever eaten. It was a yam paste with bits of dried fruit and sesame seeds in it. It was definitely a paste, and pretty much tasted like…well, paste. It was the consistency of…paste, and looked like…paste. It was not super tasty, it WAS super pasty, and none of us were really game to order seconds of that particular dish.
The second day I had another FDP about the religions of Malaysia, which was fairly uninteresting and involved walking around to various temples, churches and mosques in the Georgetown area. Relatively unremarkable, although the Kek Lok Si Buddhist temple had some really cool Chinese architecture happening. That night, we went to Little India in search of henna. We found it, and lots more fun, because it was Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights (yeah, every religion’s got one, whether the lights are religiously symbolic or simply a nuisance to hang when it’s 20 degrees out). We found a girl doing mendhi, and while she artfully decorated us, ended up having a really good talk with her and her brother about cultural differences and living as an Indian in Malaysia. We asked her for her dinner recommendation, took it, and enjoyed better Indian food than we’d eaten in most of India. Cashew-sauce covered chicken, a spicy Kashmiri chicken, lots of naan, and amazing mango-yogurt smoothies called lassi. We headed back to the ship after dinner because of our early ferry to Langkawi the next day.
Langkawi is a GORGEOUS archipelago off the coast of peninsular Malaysia (there are two bits of Malaysia, Peninsular and the part on the island of Borneo, aptly named ‘Borneo Malaysia’). Seriously, when you see pictures you’ll say “Oh, that’s beautiful,” but pictures do not BEGIN to do it justice. I had a “I am so lucky” moment just standing on the ferry looking at the lush green islands all around. Langkawi is a tax-free island, and we got a sweet four-star hotel room for $10 each.
We spent our two days on Langkawi relaxing. We were ravenous as soon as we got off the ferry, and made the FANTASTIC choice to eat at this dumpy looking Thai place called “Siam Palace” or something equally uninspiring. It is a rule of the world that the crappier the place looks, the better the food (only up to a point, though, I’m not advocating eating that really tasty-looking prawn off that dirt-covered plastic plate in Chinatown). This place had the BEST fried rice I have ever eaten in my life, along with an incredible coconut-milk-and-lime seafood soup, chicken curry, and fresh lime juice. I would pay airfare to Malaysia just to eat that rice once more. No lie. Okay, a little lie, but everybody loves literary embellishment.
It had been pouring rain all day, but we went in the water anyway, being the free spirits that we are. This was a good choice, because the cooler air temperature meant the water felt bathtub warm and toasty, plus a rain shower is the best shower. We chilled in the room and watched hilariously bad Malaysian soap operas (in Malay, so we dubbed it ourselves), then got a DELICIOUS dinner of noodles, the best satay of my life, and fried ice cream downstairs at the restaurant. We then hung out in the room some more, taking advantage of the WiFi to stalk Facebook and Youtube like the internet-starved techno-children we are before deciding that it was karaoke time.
Yes, there was a karaoke bar in the hotel, and yes, we took it over from 11:45pm until well after 1. I mean took over literally, because there was no one in there and no hotel staff to set it up, as it technically closed at midnight. We figured out the equipment for ourselves (lucky for me the CD player was the same one we used to use at YMCA gymnastics), then proceeded to spend the next hour and a half serenading each other with fantastic English (there were also Malay, Mandarin and Hindi) hits, including one song that we had never heard and used the on-screen lyrics to make up notes for it. I love hanging out with music nerds, because there is usually improvisation, there is usually dancing, and there is always harmony (pun intended).
The second day was paradise- super sunny and warm. We relaxed on the beach in the morning, then Katey and I went in for our spa treatments. We paid less than $60 for an hour-long massage, a facial, a body scrub, and something called a milk bath, which will come into play later.
This spa treatment will forever be known as Katey and my “Accidental Lesbian Holiday” (seriously, that’s how we refer to it now), because after being in the same room for our now-couples massage, facial and scrub, THEY DREW US THE SAME BATH. This was clearly because there was only one bath, but Katey and I thought it was hysterical nonetheless. Our initial shared look as we walked in was pretty priceless, and while we decided taking turns in the bath would be the best course of action, we thought the whole concept was fairly uproarious.
We took the evening ferry back, which yielded stunning views of the archipelago and the Malaysian sunset, then headed to Penang Rd. to stay in a hotel for the night, as we wanted to go to a morning market up the street the next day. We fought other SAS kids for rooms at several hotels before nabbing the “family suite” at the Oriental Hotel, which was clean but by no means fancy. The “family suite” was code for “two twins and a double bed in a strange round formation, circling-the-wagons style, centered around a large pole in the center of the room.” We left our suite and hit up dinner at the Red Market, which is a mini night market and ginormous food market with entertainment. This was the dinner highlight of Malaysia. We ate like kings for about $3 each: pad thai, fried rice, chicken satay, amazing Malay BBQ chicken, and incredible duck, all finished off with fried sweet corn ice cream. I know it sounds weird that sweet corn is an ice cream flavor, but this was seriously the most awesome dessert I have tasted in a while (especially after the yam paste). It genuinely tastes like corn, but the sweet summery yellow corn. It is textured like ice cream and coated in a thin layer of fry-age. I have daydreams about this fried ice cream. Seriously. Full of ice cream and happiness, I bargained a dress seller down from RM90 to RM50 (a little less than $15) for a cute long gray jersey dress.
In the morning, we left our wagon encampment and headed up the street to the market. The Little Penang Craft Market is held the last Sunday of every month, and contains several trinket/curio sellers, a few clothing sellers and A LOT of jewelry. The atmosphere reminded me of the Scituate art fair, but a lot smaller, more like the Bird Sanctuary’s autumnal bonanza. I bought a lot of gifts, for myself and for others. If I tell you your gift came from Malaysia, it’s either from this craft market or from the STELLAR craft shop in the mini-mall-thing attached to the ferry place.
After the craft fair, we headed back to the ship to ditch our many purchases, eat a quick lunch and head back out for our final service projects. Katey and Eleanor went to the St. Joseph’s Orphanage, which they said was unfortunately very crowded and overwhelming for the kids that live there. I went to the Cheshire home, a care center for mentally challenged teens and adults. It was tough to interact with the combination of the language barrier and the differing levels of cognitive development. It was hard for me because I’ve never worked with the mentally challenged, and we weren’t informed as to the degree of developmental delay in most of the people there, so I wasn’t sure who wanted to color and who wanted to practice their English. We all eventually found friends though, and I spent a few hours helping a guy named Lim work on puzzles, and coloring with a really sweet woman named Hooilee. All in all it was a learning experience for me.
After that it was back to the ship, and off we sailed for Vietnam! We’ll be there tomorrow morning, and then I leave pretty much right away for Cambodia. I’ll let you know how it goes! Who knows, maybe I’ll bring home a baby, Angelina style. Send me emails to come back to!
I have been feeling a little bad that I have been basically just giving a play-by-play of what I do and not what I feel or what happens aboard the ship, but there’s just so much that goes on in every possible sector that I have to pick something to focus on. So far, I have been brought to tears several times, bowled over by the realization that this is happening, that this world traversing is my life, and how utterly blessed I am to have the supportive family, financial means, personal stamina and general beautiful life that I have. I don’t know if I will ever find a way to repay you, Mom and Dad, for making this trip possible; or to thank you enough, Gram & Pop, for the amazing sendoff gifts you gave me. I know I will certainly spend many years trying.
Enough sentiment, let’s get to the play-by-play! Malaysia is AMAZING. I would go back in a heartbeat. Penang is super safe- I never felt threatened or bothered in any way- and the people are all friendly and ready to have a conversation. Several factors helped Malaysia’s natural charms shine ever more: the relaxed atmosphere and lack of tight time budgets and my fabulous travel partners, Katey, Eleanor and Danica. We had so much fun basically hanging around and eating, because there is no better way to experience a culture than to eat its food. Seriously.
Malaysia is semi-multicultural, albeit not to the degree of the mostly-immigrant US. Malaysia has three main ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian. The Chinese and Indians have been in Malaysia for centuries, but some still feel that the Malays have all the power, and that they are treated as second-class citizens. Most Chinese and Indian Malaysians have never been to their ancestors’ home countries. The racism was never apparent to any of us, but it is very clear that neighborhoods and restaurants (no fusion) are separated by culture.
Day 1: I went on an FDP to a drug rehab center, an experience that was far less dry and far more rewarding than I had expected. I am a total psych nerd, so I obviously enjoyed it, but what made it really cool was that instead of taking us on a lame tour of the grounds, we were able to speak with and quasi-interview several of the patients at the facility. This place, while it was clearly a clean, well-maintained and quality facility, was VERY different from a rehab center you’d experience in the US.
There was a staff of only 7 for nearly 400 inmates (they called them ‘inmates’, not ‘patients’, another difference I will return to in but a few sentences), and none of them were professionally educated in psychology, just a training program for that specific facility. They followed an 8-step program (that none of us had never heard of, even Dr. Cargill) based on a center in NY, and had a minimum stay of 24 months, although most inmates are let out earlier for success and good behavior. The patients are called inmates because it is a government-mandated facility, and as such is more of a penal system solely for drug addicts. While we got differing answers from the staff and the inmates, we eventually eked out of them that the recidivism (the do-you-come-back-for-more) rate was about 70%, which is fairly high, but not surprising considering that it is a mandated and not voluntary facility.
The man I spoke with was 52 and was on his second go, having been in the center in 1995 and then clean for the next 12 years. He said that the most dangerous thing for him to have once released was free time. In the center, the inmates are up and occupied from 5:30am to 11pm, and once released, there is little to no follow-up counseling, job placement, or training to ensure success outside of the facility. Malaysia is trying to eradicate drugs COMPLETELY by 2015 (a lofty goal in my and my interviewee’s opinion), and there are government mandated rehab facilities all over the country. Most addicts (that are convicted, at least) are men, and there is only one center each for women, juveniles, and voluntary admittance.
After that illuminating field trip, I headed back to the ship, then back out to grab some dinner. This going back on the ship then leaving again may sound simple to you, but it was not. We had to do something called “tendering”, which meant our ship was anchored in the harbor, not docked, and we therefore had to use one of our lifeboats as a baby ferry to take us the 8 or so minutes from ship to shore. These boats left the ship on the hour from 7am-1am, and left the shore on the half hour from 7:30 to 1:30. Luckily, we only have/had to tender in Malaysia.
Dinner that night meant Chinese food, and then out to the clubs on Penang Rd. because it was ladies night. Ladies night was a lot less awesome than it sounds, and we got on the midnight tender to beat the river of SAS kids that was inevitably going to come in on the 1am. Dinner was REAL Chinese food, which meant tasty duck and fried rice and the strangest “dessert” I have ever eaten. It was a yam paste with bits of dried fruit and sesame seeds in it. It was definitely a paste, and pretty much tasted like…well, paste. It was the consistency of…paste, and looked like…paste. It was not super tasty, it WAS super pasty, and none of us were really game to order seconds of that particular dish.
The second day I had another FDP about the religions of Malaysia, which was fairly uninteresting and involved walking around to various temples, churches and mosques in the Georgetown area. Relatively unremarkable, although the Kek Lok Si Buddhist temple had some really cool Chinese architecture happening. That night, we went to Little India in search of henna. We found it, and lots more fun, because it was Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights (yeah, every religion’s got one, whether the lights are religiously symbolic or simply a nuisance to hang when it’s 20 degrees out). We found a girl doing mendhi, and while she artfully decorated us, ended up having a really good talk with her and her brother about cultural differences and living as an Indian in Malaysia. We asked her for her dinner recommendation, took it, and enjoyed better Indian food than we’d eaten in most of India. Cashew-sauce covered chicken, a spicy Kashmiri chicken, lots of naan, and amazing mango-yogurt smoothies called lassi. We headed back to the ship after dinner because of our early ferry to Langkawi the next day.
Langkawi is a GORGEOUS archipelago off the coast of peninsular Malaysia (there are two bits of Malaysia, Peninsular and the part on the island of Borneo, aptly named ‘Borneo Malaysia’). Seriously, when you see pictures you’ll say “Oh, that’s beautiful,” but pictures do not BEGIN to do it justice. I had a “I am so lucky” moment just standing on the ferry looking at the lush green islands all around. Langkawi is a tax-free island, and we got a sweet four-star hotel room for $10 each.
We spent our two days on Langkawi relaxing. We were ravenous as soon as we got off the ferry, and made the FANTASTIC choice to eat at this dumpy looking Thai place called “Siam Palace” or something equally uninspiring. It is a rule of the world that the crappier the place looks, the better the food (only up to a point, though, I’m not advocating eating that really tasty-looking prawn off that dirt-covered plastic plate in Chinatown). This place had the BEST fried rice I have ever eaten in my life, along with an incredible coconut-milk-and-lime seafood soup, chicken curry, and fresh lime juice. I would pay airfare to Malaysia just to eat that rice once more. No lie. Okay, a little lie, but everybody loves literary embellishment.
It had been pouring rain all day, but we went in the water anyway, being the free spirits that we are. This was a good choice, because the cooler air temperature meant the water felt bathtub warm and toasty, plus a rain shower is the best shower. We chilled in the room and watched hilariously bad Malaysian soap operas (in Malay, so we dubbed it ourselves), then got a DELICIOUS dinner of noodles, the best satay of my life, and fried ice cream downstairs at the restaurant. We then hung out in the room some more, taking advantage of the WiFi to stalk Facebook and Youtube like the internet-starved techno-children we are before deciding that it was karaoke time.
Yes, there was a karaoke bar in the hotel, and yes, we took it over from 11:45pm until well after 1. I mean took over literally, because there was no one in there and no hotel staff to set it up, as it technically closed at midnight. We figured out the equipment for ourselves (lucky for me the CD player was the same one we used to use at YMCA gymnastics), then proceeded to spend the next hour and a half serenading each other with fantastic English (there were also Malay, Mandarin and Hindi) hits, including one song that we had never heard and used the on-screen lyrics to make up notes for it. I love hanging out with music nerds, because there is usually improvisation, there is usually dancing, and there is always harmony (pun intended).
The second day was paradise- super sunny and warm. We relaxed on the beach in the morning, then Katey and I went in for our spa treatments. We paid less than $60 for an hour-long massage, a facial, a body scrub, and something called a milk bath, which will come into play later.
This spa treatment will forever be known as Katey and my “Accidental Lesbian Holiday” (seriously, that’s how we refer to it now), because after being in the same room for our now-couples massage, facial and scrub, THEY DREW US THE SAME BATH. This was clearly because there was only one bath, but Katey and I thought it was hysterical nonetheless. Our initial shared look as we walked in was pretty priceless, and while we decided taking turns in the bath would be the best course of action, we thought the whole concept was fairly uproarious.
We took the evening ferry back, which yielded stunning views of the archipelago and the Malaysian sunset, then headed to Penang Rd. to stay in a hotel for the night, as we wanted to go to a morning market up the street the next day. We fought other SAS kids for rooms at several hotels before nabbing the “family suite” at the Oriental Hotel, which was clean but by no means fancy. The “family suite” was code for “two twins and a double bed in a strange round formation, circling-the-wagons style, centered around a large pole in the center of the room.” We left our suite and hit up dinner at the Red Market, which is a mini night market and ginormous food market with entertainment. This was the dinner highlight of Malaysia. We ate like kings for about $3 each: pad thai, fried rice, chicken satay, amazing Malay BBQ chicken, and incredible duck, all finished off with fried sweet corn ice cream. I know it sounds weird that sweet corn is an ice cream flavor, but this was seriously the most awesome dessert I have tasted in a while (especially after the yam paste). It genuinely tastes like corn, but the sweet summery yellow corn. It is textured like ice cream and coated in a thin layer of fry-age. I have daydreams about this fried ice cream. Seriously. Full of ice cream and happiness, I bargained a dress seller down from RM90 to RM50 (a little less than $15) for a cute long gray jersey dress.
In the morning, we left our wagon encampment and headed up the street to the market. The Little Penang Craft Market is held the last Sunday of every month, and contains several trinket/curio sellers, a few clothing sellers and A LOT of jewelry. The atmosphere reminded me of the Scituate art fair, but a lot smaller, more like the Bird Sanctuary’s autumnal bonanza. I bought a lot of gifts, for myself and for others. If I tell you your gift came from Malaysia, it’s either from this craft market or from the STELLAR craft shop in the mini-mall-thing attached to the ferry place.
After the craft fair, we headed back to the ship to ditch our many purchases, eat a quick lunch and head back out for our final service projects. Katey and Eleanor went to the St. Joseph’s Orphanage, which they said was unfortunately very crowded and overwhelming for the kids that live there. I went to the Cheshire home, a care center for mentally challenged teens and adults. It was tough to interact with the combination of the language barrier and the differing levels of cognitive development. It was hard for me because I’ve never worked with the mentally challenged, and we weren’t informed as to the degree of developmental delay in most of the people there, so I wasn’t sure who wanted to color and who wanted to practice their English. We all eventually found friends though, and I spent a few hours helping a guy named Lim work on puzzles, and coloring with a really sweet woman named Hooilee. All in all it was a learning experience for me.
After that it was back to the ship, and off we sailed for Vietnam! We’ll be there tomorrow morning, and then I leave pretty much right away for Cambodia. I’ll let you know how it goes! Who knows, maybe I’ll bring home a baby, Angelina style. Send me emails to come back to!
Lesson Twelve: How to Make Far Too Many Jokes about Dong & Cu Chi
Sorry for you sensitive eyes out there, but that title was totally necessary, because everyone giggled any time ANYONE said “dong” or “cu chi”. Seriously, Vietnamese currency is the dong. I swear every country’s currency either starts with D or R. Dollars, dong, ringitts, riel, rupees, rand, reais, renminbi (colloquially yuan, though). It’s just silly. Be a little more creative, people!
PS- I forgot to post Malaysia first, so it's out of order. Deal.
Beyond stupid double entendres, Vietnam/Cambodia was at times VERY intense. The two most moving things were seeing the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. I do not, nor will I ever, understand how a human being can be so torturously cruel to another human being. The tortures prisoners endured and the conditions in which they were held are deplorable, and I truly do not understand how people could do things like round up 60 children, toss them up in the air, and catch them on their bayonet on the way back down. THAT HAPPENED. The Khmer Rouge didn’t just take a bunch of Cambodians out back and fire away. They cruelly, methodically tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians in the name of “revolution”. Against what? NOTHING. I don’t think I will ever forget the feeling of standing in a field where 30 years later, in the rainy season, clothes and teeth from the mass graves still rise to the surface. I saw people’s clothing buried in the dirt, people that were beaten, maimed and even decapitated, then thrown into a giant hole in the ground. I still cry every time I think about standing there amidst that kind of evil.
The War Remnants Museum, while very biased, was not biased enough to discount its truths. A simple room, the museum holds war-era weaponry and shows off tanks and fighter jets on its front lawn, but the real power of the museum lies in its photographs. I can’t imagine the pain of being the photojournalist who took these pictures. There are pictures of Vietnamese prisoners of war, families (pregnant women, infants, grandparents) needlessly killed off in town raids, people affected by Agent Orange and napalm, and American soldiers torturing Vietnamese. The hardest thing for me to see was the Agent Orange wall. Agent Orange, which releases a pollutant called dioxin, is now recognized as one of the most hazardous defoliants on earth. The wall showed pictures of Vietnamese people affected by Agent Orange, from a 30-year old woman who stands only 2.5 feet tall, to a child born in 1998, still debilitatingly mangled despite being born 30 years after the war. Women whose husbands have been exposed have had miscarriages due to the potency of dioxins in affecting the reproductive system.
Tonight (back on the ship) we had a discussion led by faculty and lifelong learners who had lived through the war. Almost all were against it, some were very active protestors, some were conscientious objectors, and one professor who served got up to speak and choked up before he could get out even a full sentence. I thought India would be the tough country, the country that was most difficult to see and the most transforming. India was outstripped by Vietnam and Cambodia. I have teared up almost every day in the countries, and tonight at the talk. I think a little bit of it might be collective guilt for everything that’s happened to Vietnam, but as was brought up, it is especially difficult because the Vietnamese people are kind, friendly, and show no anger or resentment when they hear that I am an American. It is difficult because when I see pictures of children and adults affected by Agent Orange and napalm bombs, I know that we did that. It is difficult because standing on ground where thousands of people were brutally murdered in the name of revolution makes me lose a little of my faith in the human race. I have gotten a good look at human cruelty in the last week, and the interspersion of that with the striking beauty of thousand-year-old temples and the graciousness of the Vietnamese and Cambodian people has been the most emotionally affective part of this voyage.
One of the best things about Vietnam was the timing. Going right before the presidential election, right before we decided on who would be the person to deal with our Vietnam Redux situation in Iraq, made Barack Obama’s victory today all the more emotional. I have NEVER cared this much about a presidential election, or a concessions speech, or a “yay-I’m-the-president-elect” speech. I cried. I seem to be doing a lot of that lately, not out of sadness but out of strong emotion, whether it is horror or joy. John McCain’s concession speech made me like him more, and Barack Obama’s speech was FANTASTIC. He is going to make an amazing president, I can feel it. This is such a huge historical event for our country, and the fact that his personality and charisma far outshines his skin color, and that he has never played “the race card”, makes me like him all the more. BARACK OBAMA! WOO! There was a massive celebration in our mostly-Democrat population. People were cheering and jumping up and down, especially when Barack shouted out to “those in the far unknown corners of the world,” which is, in fact, exactly where we are, being somewhere in between Vietnam & Hong Kong. My morning class was cancelled so we could watch the votes roll in on MSNBC streaming video in the Union. It was amazing! I love that the place where I grew up is so very, very blue. Props, Northeast.
Okay, since that “feelings” bit was so long, I’ll try and keep the “what I did” bit short. Probably won’t happen though, by now you know how I like to go on. Day 1: We didn’t even get in to Vietnam until after noon, because floating down the Mekong takes a long time. Once we arrived, I didn’t have time to do anything, so I just bided my time until meeting my Cambodia group and heading to the airport. One very short (50 minute) flight later, we were in Phnom Penh. We were supposed to go to an orphanage founded by SAS alums, but thanks to said late arrival, we had no time and just went straight to dinner. Dinner was a tasty seven course affair with your average asian dishes- soup, noodles, rice, and a Khmer special called amok, which is this curried, SUPER soft and tender fish business. After fresh fruit for dessert (Cambodia papaya is fairly magical), we went back to our sweet hotel, and Steph and I got massages. A one hour Thai massage for $14=awesome. She stepped on my back and twisted me around and cracked all my bones. It was pretty sweet.
Day 2: Killing Fields. As mentioned, it was really sad. One thing that was a little symbol of hope: at the stupa where all the exhumed skulls were, there were piles upon piles of tiny stacked Japanese paper cranes hanging on the door. Japanese legend says that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes and make a wish, your wish will come true. Because of Hiroshima and Sadako Sasaki the cranes have become a symbol for world peace. We also went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Tuol Sleng used to be a high school until the Khmer Rouge turned it into an interrogation and torture camp. Like the War Remnants museum, there were pictures on the walls of prisoners, beaten and tortured. After our morning of mourning, we went to the Royal Palace and tried to think about the beautiful architecture and pretty colors without getting distracted by either a) the depression that set in after morning or b) the staggering heat that was literally worse than the Amazon. I, wanting to be all respectful, had worn a button-up oxford, and was absolutely DYING. You know when you have a shirt that you don’t wear much and can’t remember why, so you wear it again, and only then do you remember? YEAH. That’s why. Because it is hot as ANYTHING and NOT breathable. After the Royal Palace, we ate lunch at another generally asian restaurant, spring rolls and morning glory (best green vegetable ever, I kid you not) and crossed the heart-poundingly crowded street and went to a market. Now, we didn’t think of this when we couldn’t find the market’s entrance, but we sure realized it when we came out: the whole thing was EXACTLY SYMMETRICAL. This thing looks the same from every possible angle. We left out one side, then kept running around and around it looking for the area where our bus was. We were late, ducking and weaving through cyclos and cars hoping that our bus had not left for the airport. It hadn’t, we found it, and got on.
The flight to Siem Reap was seriously the shortest flight I have ever been on. It was literally only 35 minutes long. Despite this, we still got a snack. I have determined that US airlines have the worst service in the world (I can say that un-hyperbolically now, because I actually know). All the planes I’ve been on in Brazil, India, Vietnam and Cambodia have served GOOD food, taken off on time, and not been delayed. Props, world. Our first Siem Reap stop was Angkor Thom, a sweet temple where we watched the sun set with a billion other tourists. The steps were really steep going up and down the temple, less than the width of my foot. After sunset we went to a restaurant with a FANTASTIC buffet and watched a really cool dance show, a style called apsara. Our hotel, the Borei Angkor, was amaaaaaaaazing. It was all silk curtains and hardwood floors and mahogany paneling everywhere, plus a sweet bathroom with slate tiles, a big porcelain clawfoot tub, and shampoo/conditioner in stone bottles. Craziness. It was Halloween, but as we were waking up at 4:30 to see Angkor Wat, we just decided to hit up the nearby night market and go to bed. The night market was cool and very well set up. My friend Liz got a crazy pedicure type deal where you stick your feet in a pool of fish and the fish come eat all the dead skin off your feet! It was absolutely ridiculous watching fish eat my friend’s feet.
Sunrise at Angkor Wat was pretty but cloudy. We ate breakfast at the hotel, then started our Temple Day. At Angkor Thom, we went to Bauphon, a really cool legends-of-the-hidden-temple looking thing with stone faces everywhere, plus an elephant temple. I rode an elephant! I sort of take issue with the way they are trained and treated, but Steph didn’t want to go by herself and it was an experience. My favorite part was the jungle temple called Ta Prohm. A guy built the temple for his mother the queen in the 11th century. It was abandoned in the 15th, and not rediscovered until the 19th century. After 400 years of complete abandonment, these giant symbiotic trees had wound their roots in and around the stone until the ruins and forest were one big tangle. It was really, incredibly amazing. We also went to Angkor Wat again in the afternoon, but this time we got to go inside and explore. It was amazing to stand on 1,000 year old stone and walk through truly ancient archways. After all those temples we got on the plane and headed back to Vietnam.
My first full day in Vietnam was spent hanging with my friends Carla and Mark, who I’m also going to China with (tomorrow!). We hit up the Ben Thanh Market, where I got many a Christmas gift, plus a little lacquered something for myself, a square painting of Paul Klimt’s “The Kiss”, one of my fave paintings. I went with them to their tailor and sighed despairingly as they tried on their custom-made suits (that I had no time for, thanks Cambodia). Carla found glasses (frames and prescription lenses) for $30. You can’t beat that. I almost got a pair (they could check your eyes and get you a prescription right there), but as I barely wear the glasses I have, I figured it wasn’t worth it. We went to the Vietnam History Museum, which was super boring except for the water puppet show, which was delightful in a campy sort of way. People stand in waist deep water behind a curtain and move these puppets through the water- usually fish and ducks and river-dwelling people and such. After all that, we dropped our stuff off at the ship and went back out for dinner at a super tasty grill-it-yourself restaurant not unlike Melting Pot (except waaaay cheaper at only $6). We had to go back to the tailor, and in the process, found a place that grills frogs. Oh yeah you know I ate frog. We actually got to hand pick our frog out of a tank, which was a little sad but not sad enough for me not to eat it! It was okay, I didn’t love the texture but it tasted great.
The last day I went to the Cu Chi tunnels with Eleanor, Katey, Carla and Mark. It was crazy to see all the guerilla tactics and booby traps the Viet Cong used in the war. We watched a mildly propagandalicious video about “the untouched beauty of the Cu Chi” (“Many flowers were grow, and many trees” etc.). Everybody except for me crawled in a tiny little sniper hole (I didn’t want to risk having my giant bum get stuck, thus giving me a Winnie-the-pooh-in –the-window situation that does not mesh well with crowds of foreign tourists and humiliation) in the ground that couldn’t have been much bigger than an 8.5x11 piece of paper. People would crouch in those holes for ages. We saw all the booby traps with bamboo and metal spikes and craziness. It’s no wonder Vietnam vets lobbied for PTSD, I can see how being afraid every step would blow you up or impale you might cause a little anxiety. After visiting the shooting range (where my friend shot an AK-47 that bowled her over because of the recoil), we actually went down in the tunnels. Despite being widened 40% for our pampered American butts, they were still just barely small enough to ball yourself up in, and they were muddy and very dark. I can’t imagine spending days upon days in the tunnels, snake-crawling on your belly through 250km of tunnel. There were storerooms, kitchens, even a honeymoon room. Ironically, the napalm bombs the Americans threw only served to harden the mostly-clay soil, making the tunnels stronger.
We drove back to HCMC and went to the aforementioned War Remnants Museum, then ate a tasty street dinner with Thai fried rice, curried wild boar with rice noodles, morning glory and a Vietnam special, the avocado milkshake. I must bring the wonder of this back to the States. Sweetened condensed milk + avocado = heaven. After a bit more DVD buying and some tasty flan, we took cyclos back to the ship and said goodbye to Vietnam. Motorcycle taxis are awesome. So is Vietnam. I wish we could’ve spent at least another week there.
We’ll be in HK tomorrow. From there I go to Beijing for 3 days (21 here I come), then Shanghai to meet the ship. The closer we get to heading home, the less I want to. Of course I will be very happy to be with my family and friends and have it be Christmas time, but I absolutely do not want this journey to end. A plus- my journey is certainly not ending, as yesterday I got accepted to the BU Paris Internship program for spring! I will be home for 30 days, and then leave for the city of lights until May! YAY!
PS- I forgot to post Malaysia first, so it's out of order. Deal.
Beyond stupid double entendres, Vietnam/Cambodia was at times VERY intense. The two most moving things were seeing the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. I do not, nor will I ever, understand how a human being can be so torturously cruel to another human being. The tortures prisoners endured and the conditions in which they were held are deplorable, and I truly do not understand how people could do things like round up 60 children, toss them up in the air, and catch them on their bayonet on the way back down. THAT HAPPENED. The Khmer Rouge didn’t just take a bunch of Cambodians out back and fire away. They cruelly, methodically tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians in the name of “revolution”. Against what? NOTHING. I don’t think I will ever forget the feeling of standing in a field where 30 years later, in the rainy season, clothes and teeth from the mass graves still rise to the surface. I saw people’s clothing buried in the dirt, people that were beaten, maimed and even decapitated, then thrown into a giant hole in the ground. I still cry every time I think about standing there amidst that kind of evil.
The War Remnants Museum, while very biased, was not biased enough to discount its truths. A simple room, the museum holds war-era weaponry and shows off tanks and fighter jets on its front lawn, but the real power of the museum lies in its photographs. I can’t imagine the pain of being the photojournalist who took these pictures. There are pictures of Vietnamese prisoners of war, families (pregnant women, infants, grandparents) needlessly killed off in town raids, people affected by Agent Orange and napalm, and American soldiers torturing Vietnamese. The hardest thing for me to see was the Agent Orange wall. Agent Orange, which releases a pollutant called dioxin, is now recognized as one of the most hazardous defoliants on earth. The wall showed pictures of Vietnamese people affected by Agent Orange, from a 30-year old woman who stands only 2.5 feet tall, to a child born in 1998, still debilitatingly mangled despite being born 30 years after the war. Women whose husbands have been exposed have had miscarriages due to the potency of dioxins in affecting the reproductive system.
Tonight (back on the ship) we had a discussion led by faculty and lifelong learners who had lived through the war. Almost all were against it, some were very active protestors, some were conscientious objectors, and one professor who served got up to speak and choked up before he could get out even a full sentence. I thought India would be the tough country, the country that was most difficult to see and the most transforming. India was outstripped by Vietnam and Cambodia. I have teared up almost every day in the countries, and tonight at the talk. I think a little bit of it might be collective guilt for everything that’s happened to Vietnam, but as was brought up, it is especially difficult because the Vietnamese people are kind, friendly, and show no anger or resentment when they hear that I am an American. It is difficult because when I see pictures of children and adults affected by Agent Orange and napalm bombs, I know that we did that. It is difficult because standing on ground where thousands of people were brutally murdered in the name of revolution makes me lose a little of my faith in the human race. I have gotten a good look at human cruelty in the last week, and the interspersion of that with the striking beauty of thousand-year-old temples and the graciousness of the Vietnamese and Cambodian people has been the most emotionally affective part of this voyage.
One of the best things about Vietnam was the timing. Going right before the presidential election, right before we decided on who would be the person to deal with our Vietnam Redux situation in Iraq, made Barack Obama’s victory today all the more emotional. I have NEVER cared this much about a presidential election, or a concessions speech, or a “yay-I’m-the-president-elect” speech. I cried. I seem to be doing a lot of that lately, not out of sadness but out of strong emotion, whether it is horror or joy. John McCain’s concession speech made me like him more, and Barack Obama’s speech was FANTASTIC. He is going to make an amazing president, I can feel it. This is such a huge historical event for our country, and the fact that his personality and charisma far outshines his skin color, and that he has never played “the race card”, makes me like him all the more. BARACK OBAMA! WOO! There was a massive celebration in our mostly-Democrat population. People were cheering and jumping up and down, especially when Barack shouted out to “those in the far unknown corners of the world,” which is, in fact, exactly where we are, being somewhere in between Vietnam & Hong Kong. My morning class was cancelled so we could watch the votes roll in on MSNBC streaming video in the Union. It was amazing! I love that the place where I grew up is so very, very blue. Props, Northeast.
Okay, since that “feelings” bit was so long, I’ll try and keep the “what I did” bit short. Probably won’t happen though, by now you know how I like to go on. Day 1: We didn’t even get in to Vietnam until after noon, because floating down the Mekong takes a long time. Once we arrived, I didn’t have time to do anything, so I just bided my time until meeting my Cambodia group and heading to the airport. One very short (50 minute) flight later, we were in Phnom Penh. We were supposed to go to an orphanage founded by SAS alums, but thanks to said late arrival, we had no time and just went straight to dinner. Dinner was a tasty seven course affair with your average asian dishes- soup, noodles, rice, and a Khmer special called amok, which is this curried, SUPER soft and tender fish business. After fresh fruit for dessert (Cambodia papaya is fairly magical), we went back to our sweet hotel, and Steph and I got massages. A one hour Thai massage for $14=awesome. She stepped on my back and twisted me around and cracked all my bones. It was pretty sweet.
Day 2: Killing Fields. As mentioned, it was really sad. One thing that was a little symbol of hope: at the stupa where all the exhumed skulls were, there were piles upon piles of tiny stacked Japanese paper cranes hanging on the door. Japanese legend says that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes and make a wish, your wish will come true. Because of Hiroshima and Sadako Sasaki the cranes have become a symbol for world peace. We also went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Tuol Sleng used to be a high school until the Khmer Rouge turned it into an interrogation and torture camp. Like the War Remnants museum, there were pictures on the walls of prisoners, beaten and tortured. After our morning of mourning, we went to the Royal Palace and tried to think about the beautiful architecture and pretty colors without getting distracted by either a) the depression that set in after morning or b) the staggering heat that was literally worse than the Amazon. I, wanting to be all respectful, had worn a button-up oxford, and was absolutely DYING. You know when you have a shirt that you don’t wear much and can’t remember why, so you wear it again, and only then do you remember? YEAH. That’s why. Because it is hot as ANYTHING and NOT breathable. After the Royal Palace, we ate lunch at another generally asian restaurant, spring rolls and morning glory (best green vegetable ever, I kid you not) and crossed the heart-poundingly crowded street and went to a market. Now, we didn’t think of this when we couldn’t find the market’s entrance, but we sure realized it when we came out: the whole thing was EXACTLY SYMMETRICAL. This thing looks the same from every possible angle. We left out one side, then kept running around and around it looking for the area where our bus was. We were late, ducking and weaving through cyclos and cars hoping that our bus had not left for the airport. It hadn’t, we found it, and got on.
The flight to Siem Reap was seriously the shortest flight I have ever been on. It was literally only 35 minutes long. Despite this, we still got a snack. I have determined that US airlines have the worst service in the world (I can say that un-hyperbolically now, because I actually know). All the planes I’ve been on in Brazil, India, Vietnam and Cambodia have served GOOD food, taken off on time, and not been delayed. Props, world. Our first Siem Reap stop was Angkor Thom, a sweet temple where we watched the sun set with a billion other tourists. The steps were really steep going up and down the temple, less than the width of my foot. After sunset we went to a restaurant with a FANTASTIC buffet and watched a really cool dance show, a style called apsara. Our hotel, the Borei Angkor, was amaaaaaaaazing. It was all silk curtains and hardwood floors and mahogany paneling everywhere, plus a sweet bathroom with slate tiles, a big porcelain clawfoot tub, and shampoo/conditioner in stone bottles. Craziness. It was Halloween, but as we were waking up at 4:30 to see Angkor Wat, we just decided to hit up the nearby night market and go to bed. The night market was cool and very well set up. My friend Liz got a crazy pedicure type deal where you stick your feet in a pool of fish and the fish come eat all the dead skin off your feet! It was absolutely ridiculous watching fish eat my friend’s feet.
Sunrise at Angkor Wat was pretty but cloudy. We ate breakfast at the hotel, then started our Temple Day. At Angkor Thom, we went to Bauphon, a really cool legends-of-the-hidden-temple looking thing with stone faces everywhere, plus an elephant temple. I rode an elephant! I sort of take issue with the way they are trained and treated, but Steph didn’t want to go by herself and it was an experience. My favorite part was the jungle temple called Ta Prohm. A guy built the temple for his mother the queen in the 11th century. It was abandoned in the 15th, and not rediscovered until the 19th century. After 400 years of complete abandonment, these giant symbiotic trees had wound their roots in and around the stone until the ruins and forest were one big tangle. It was really, incredibly amazing. We also went to Angkor Wat again in the afternoon, but this time we got to go inside and explore. It was amazing to stand on 1,000 year old stone and walk through truly ancient archways. After all those temples we got on the plane and headed back to Vietnam.
My first full day in Vietnam was spent hanging with my friends Carla and Mark, who I’m also going to China with (tomorrow!). We hit up the Ben Thanh Market, where I got many a Christmas gift, plus a little lacquered something for myself, a square painting of Paul Klimt’s “The Kiss”, one of my fave paintings. I went with them to their tailor and sighed despairingly as they tried on their custom-made suits (that I had no time for, thanks Cambodia). Carla found glasses (frames and prescription lenses) for $30. You can’t beat that. I almost got a pair (they could check your eyes and get you a prescription right there), but as I barely wear the glasses I have, I figured it wasn’t worth it. We went to the Vietnam History Museum, which was super boring except for the water puppet show, which was delightful in a campy sort of way. People stand in waist deep water behind a curtain and move these puppets through the water- usually fish and ducks and river-dwelling people and such. After all that, we dropped our stuff off at the ship and went back out for dinner at a super tasty grill-it-yourself restaurant not unlike Melting Pot (except waaaay cheaper at only $6). We had to go back to the tailor, and in the process, found a place that grills frogs. Oh yeah you know I ate frog. We actually got to hand pick our frog out of a tank, which was a little sad but not sad enough for me not to eat it! It was okay, I didn’t love the texture but it tasted great.
The last day I went to the Cu Chi tunnels with Eleanor, Katey, Carla and Mark. It was crazy to see all the guerilla tactics and booby traps the Viet Cong used in the war. We watched a mildly propagandalicious video about “the untouched beauty of the Cu Chi” (“Many flowers were grow, and many trees” etc.). Everybody except for me crawled in a tiny little sniper hole (I didn’t want to risk having my giant bum get stuck, thus giving me a Winnie-the-pooh-in –the-window situation that does not mesh well with crowds of foreign tourists and humiliation) in the ground that couldn’t have been much bigger than an 8.5x11 piece of paper. People would crouch in those holes for ages. We saw all the booby traps with bamboo and metal spikes and craziness. It’s no wonder Vietnam vets lobbied for PTSD, I can see how being afraid every step would blow you up or impale you might cause a little anxiety. After visiting the shooting range (where my friend shot an AK-47 that bowled her over because of the recoil), we actually went down in the tunnels. Despite being widened 40% for our pampered American butts, they were still just barely small enough to ball yourself up in, and they were muddy and very dark. I can’t imagine spending days upon days in the tunnels, snake-crawling on your belly through 250km of tunnel. There were storerooms, kitchens, even a honeymoon room. Ironically, the napalm bombs the Americans threw only served to harden the mostly-clay soil, making the tunnels stronger.
We drove back to HCMC and went to the aforementioned War Remnants Museum, then ate a tasty street dinner with Thai fried rice, curried wild boar with rice noodles, morning glory and a Vietnam special, the avocado milkshake. I must bring the wonder of this back to the States. Sweetened condensed milk + avocado = heaven. After a bit more DVD buying and some tasty flan, we took cyclos back to the ship and said goodbye to Vietnam. Motorcycle taxis are awesome. So is Vietnam. I wish we could’ve spent at least another week there.
We’ll be in HK tomorrow. From there I go to Beijing for 3 days (21 here I come), then Shanghai to meet the ship. The closer we get to heading home, the less I want to. Of course I will be very happy to be with my family and friends and have it be Christmas time, but I absolutely do not want this journey to end. A plus- my journey is certainly not ending, as yesterday I got accepted to the BU Paris Internship program for spring! I will be home for 30 days, and then leave for the city of lights until May! YAY!
19 October 2008
Lesson Ten: How to Simultaneously Get Culture Shock and Life Affirmation
So. India. I think I really need more time to process how I really felt about India, for several reasons. One was the time: this was the most whirlwind traveling I have ever, ever done. We were everywhere, all the time, going somewhere new. Two: India is freakin’ intense. Three: I have barely processed the fact that I went (technically we are still docked, but I’m not leaving and it’ll be on-ship time in a couple hours) to India, let alone had time to process what I felt about being there. I don’t know if I actually WILL process any time soon. I still can’t believe I was just in India for 5 days, that the last five days of crowds and cacophony was India.
Perhaps I will do a second post once I’ve processed. That is not likely though, as we get to Malaysia in a paltry two days and then it is off again, for FDPs and Kuala Lumpur for a couple days with Katey, Eleanor, Sam Squared (there are two, they are friends), Carrie & Marcella. I’m pretty sure Carla, Mark, Josh and Trevor are coming too, so we may just have a giant SAS clustermess of friendship happening. We shall see.
But INDIA. As I had read in many a Semester @ Sea blog before I embarked, the first thing I noticed about India was the smell. However, unlike the many previous blogs, mine came not from the country, but from some sort of putrid gasoline noxious death odor that a) WOKE ME UP because it was so disgusting and b) forced me to continue my attempts at sleep with the sheet over my nose so that I could breathe without dying. Once out of the engine room and off the ship, however, India smelled just fine. I guess the best way to describe it IS that it smells, but it smells like lots of different things in different areas. Whatever is smells like is multiplied by the humidity, and the smells I inhaled included pervasive sulfur/eggs, MASSES of unwashed people everywhere (more on that later), masala and spices, and a bevy of other more befuddling odors that were neither here nor there.
I think the most salient fact about India that I found was that there are so. many. people. I know, I know, anyone who’s wikipedia’d India knows that it is full of people and has the 2nd highest population in the world smushed into the size of 3 Texases. But there are really lots of people everywhere all the time. They are driving and cycling and motoring and rickshawing and walking and limping and lying in the street 24/7. This appears to have diminished their concept of personal space, as they seem to have no problem with elbowing you or whooshing past you without a flicker of an idea that they’ve even touched you. The men like to stare you down and the women appear to be indifferent, which we found refreshing (the women, not the men).
Indian women are beautiful. They take such pride in their appearance; they always have gorgeous, ornately beaded or patterned sarees or salwar kameez (a sort of flowy patterned pantsuit, I bought a few tops so you will all see them upon my return), a lot of them have bindi on their foreheads, some have mendhi on their hands and arms, and most of them are genuinely stunning.
I’ve realized that Indians (and South Africans) choose their expenses very differently than Americans. As Americans, I think the most “check out my socioeconomic status” symbol we have is our house. Buying a house is a huge deal in the US, and I think it is not a blanket statement to say that nearly everyone dreams of eventually owning their own house. This whole subprime loan/mortgage fiasco is absolute proof of the fact that getting a house often trumps true financial responsibility. In South Africa, there are people with steady jobs and Volvos staying in the townships, not because they can’t afford to move but because that is their community. In India, there is an absolutely terrible infrastructure, dirt and pollution everywhere, yet even the woman begging on the street is wearing a beautiful red saree with gold flowers and beading. Even the men that sleep on flattened cardboard boxes in the Agra streets wear clean khakis and tailored, collared shirts. I think pride and strength primarily belong to the inner self, but I also think everyone needs something to show the outside world that they are proud and strong.
This is completely unrelated to India, self-centered and self-congratulatory, but I was getting worried about getting dumber as I got older. I just didn’t care about “the issues” or current events like I thought I should. SAS has absolutely changed that. I am following the election for the first time ever, I read the NY times online every day we’re at sea (and not just the articles about Angelina Jolie). I know reasons why we are in this financial crisis, and I have opinions on how to fix it. I don’t know if I care more because it makes me feel closer to my home country or because having my eyes opened to just how privileged I am makes me feel more responsibility toward taking advantage of all that I have, but I honestly feel that I have gotten smarter and more aware as a result of being here.
I guess I will try and be chronological from this point on. So, here goes: First day. We get off the ship with an hour or two to kill before we meet to go to the airport, so Sam Squared (two Sams, they’re friends, we’ll call one Sam and one TinySam), Sam’s roomie Kress and I hop in a rickshaw (the car kind, not the bike kind) and go on a mini exploration of Chennai. We pretty much just wanted to see the sights, so we didn’t mind when the driver took us to a few shops (where he gets commission when we buy things) that were almost stupidly expensive (20 US dollars for a pashmina scarf? I can get one for $10 on Canal St, please). We would later mind these Millionaire Markets (“bazaar” my ass). We would mind very much.
That’s another thing I noticed about Indians. They think we are all filthy rich. Our first rickshaw driver, our “tour guide” (that’s a whole other story that you will read), and anyone who tried to sell us anything assumed that $165 for a comforter was totally okay. I AM IN COLLEGE! I AM BROKE ALL THE TIME. I HAVE NO MONEY. EVER. I worked my sweet booty off all summer, but I didn’t manage a hedge fund or star in a big-budget movie, so NO, I cannot afford your handcrafted silk rugs ($200 for 12”x12”), incredibly beautiful and oh-so-soft as they are.
Anyway, as this was early in the game, we were okay with just looking around. We tooled around in the rickshaw that had been promised to us for 100 rupees for an hour or so, then Sam and I headed back to the ship to catch our plane, dropping TinySam and Kress off at a normal-price market on the way. The rickshaw driver dropped us off at the port and said, “2000 rupees”. 1000 rupees each? That’s $20. Each. NO WAY, Jose. Or more appropriately, No dish, Rajesh. We (and he) recognized the ridiculosity of this monetary claim, and talked him down to a still stupid but highly manageable 400 rupees each (about $8). We walked back to the ship, joined our 47-person tour group, and got into shuttle busses (filled with mosquitoes and hot as anything) to go to the Chennai airport for our flight to Delhi.
Before I begin the tale of our Agra-Varanasi-Delhi tour, let me say that we were completely ripped off. There were points over the tour’s three days where I was absolutely livid at the crappiness of the service and information (or lack thereof) that we were receiving. We paid an exorbitant amount of money for things that, when itemized by us, amounted to about half the price we actually paid. Our tickets into the Taj and Agra Fort were not included, we had NO guides (just drivers who did not speak English or explain where they were taking you, including one who got lost) in Varanasi, and absolutely no guidance whatsoever in Delhi (which was the best day of all, further irritating us, as it advanced our belief that we could’ve done it ourselves without stupid Caretaker Tours.) Let me tell you, Caretaker did not take care with us, and I think most people in the group would warn against anyone using them in SAS’s future. We paid a $190 supplemental fee on top of our already expensive main fee, supposedly for train tickets, which we then found out cost 700 rupees, roughly $15. I am writing them an email asking for an itemized list of where our money went on behalf of the group, along with writing and encouraging others to write…let’s go with “strongly worded” emails about our intense dissatisfaction. In actuality, the only thing anyone was upset about was that we paid too much. If Caretaker gave me $400 back, I would be 100% happy with our tour. I think you should get what you pay for, and with what we paid, we should’ve been staying IN the freakin’ Taj.
Now to stop complaining and start explaining: our flight went off without a hitch, Indian airports are just like US airports, and we arrived in Delhi ready for our two-hour drive to Agra. Oh, how mistaken we were. The tour guides told us that our two-hour drive to Agra was actually a four-hour drive to Agra. Well, the four-hour drive to Agra turned into a six-hour drive to Agra, and by the time we collapsed into our beds at the Hotel Atithi for four hours of sleep before breakfast and the Taj, we were too tired to care, about the drive or about how our toilet wouldn’t flush and there was some kind of strange purple stain on Carrie’s bottom sheet. Mom, you would’ve had an absolute CONNIPTION. It was clean, but by Indian terms, anything that isn’t covered in dirt is clean. I’ve been spoiled by all the Marriots and Sheratons of my golden youth.
Next morning we had an uneventful breakfast. I had toast and cereal, finished the bowl, found black flecks in my milk, and remarked on this only to have Carrie interject “Oh yeah, my econ professor said not to eat dairy here because their pasteurization is weird.” Great timing. I’m still here though, so I guess it wasn’t too weird. We got into our bus and Taj’d it up. The Taj was just as austere and beautiful as it looks in pictures, a huge white temple made completely of marble and inlaid semi-precious stones. We got a little background story about the “white palace”, which is actually a mausoleum, from our guide Ali, then walked around for a bit just staring at it from all different angles. I thought I would be more bowled over by its awesomeness than I was, but it was still amazing to see. It was later upstaged by the Temple Ashkardam, but as we’re going chronologically, you will have to wait for that. It is very white and marbular (shut up, it’s a word today). I really have nothing to say beyond “We saw the Taj,” because that was pretty much it. It is nice that a guy would build a giant white marble temple to fulfill his wife’s dying wish, but as she bore 14 of the guy’s children, he kind of had to respect her wishes. I guess in Hindi V’s are pronounced like W’s, because the guide kept talking about “Wisitors” to the temple, which Carrie & I found hilarious because the first place our brains went was wizards and Harry Potter. We also made a platform 9 ¾ joke at the train station that night, because yes, we are that cool. We’ve started a count of the incredibly nerdy Harry Potter references we make throughout the course of our travels, and we usually score at least two on a good day.
After the Taj we went to the Agra Fort, which is where the Indian army used to drill, and where Taj Mahal dude’s son locked his father up so that he couldn’t mess with the son’s reign. The fort was all red sandstone and marble courtyards and very pretty and ornately carved archways and such. There was a great view of the Taj from one side of the fort. My personal favorite part was when we went to leave and found a small park-type thing FILLED WITH MONKEYS. It was AMAZING. I was seriously less than two feet away from wild Indian monkeys. There were tiny baby monkeys playing and wrestling and adult monkeys hanging out and loping about. There had to be at least fifty, including a few that snuck up the walls of the fort RIGHT behind us. I have at least 30 pictures of monkeys. They really are like tiny, less evolved humans. Score one for Darwin.
The city of Agra seems fairly small but almost suburban, with a dichotomy of paved roads, roadside “bottle shops” and cows meandering through the streets, or a leprosy treatment/study center with a parade of goats running down the sidewalk in front. It seemed far less hectic than Delhi or Varanasi. At one point on our way to Agra Fort, a school-age kid in his shirt-and-tie uniform hitched a ride on our bus- by holding on to the bus with one hand and steering his BICYCLE with the other. It was pretty funny; I got a great picture. In our Agra travels, we also saw a snake charmer (really) and two guys riding an elephant! I was not as happy with that, as they were hitting the poor dear with a stick and making it ride around a city instead of a jungle, but it was still very cool to see.
We drove back to the Hotel Atithi, ate a tasty buffet dinner, checked out, and got back in the bus to go to a bazaar before heading for the train station for our midnight (okay 9pm) train to Varanasi. We, the unknowing collegiates, expected our fine tour guides to guide us to a market where we could buy local handicrafts, only to be led YET AGAIN to a place where they jack up the prices 200% from what they should be. Oh, the naiveté! Fortunately/Unfortunately a fair number of SAS students are rather wealthy, and there were a few that went absolutely berserk buying things. The shopkeepers did give us free soda, though. That was a nice touch.
On to the train! We had no clue what to expect from an Indian overnight train, and our pampered American brains expected mattress pads and pristine quarters. We had to wait to find out, because the 8:30 train was delayed to 9, and then 9:30, and finally arrived around 10. Before arrival, the station decided to change the train’s platform from one to two so it wouldn’t collide with another train arriving (on time) around the same time. Now normally, a train changing platforms means you have to get your stuff, wander over to an elevator or stairway, and cross a bridge to take you to the other side. Oh no. This is India, where you grab your bag and WALK ACROSS THE TRACKS. There was a bridge, but we went with the when-in-Rome approach and ran our adrenaline-pumped little bodies across the tracks and climbed up on the other side. This had its pros (much quicker and more direct) and its cons (the bridge had about 20 monkeys climbing all over it, which we missed). When the dirty, sooty, bug-ridden baby blue Marudhar Express pulled up with sweltering denizens inside cramped berths, we were officially worried. One of the hardest things to get used to in India was that EVERYTHING was dirty. We must’ve run through a normal person’s year’s supply of Purell.
We cautiously, nervously boarded the train, our expectations forcibly lowering with every step. Our large group of 47 was split into 3 groups, and my friends and I were a group of 10, which was further split throughout one train car. Luckily our sleeper car was air conditioned. We found our numbered berths and set our backpacks and bags down on the blue vinyl bunks bordered by cold metal walls. The train had arrived late enough that most of the passengers were already asleep, which added to our trepidation, as we had the snoring of two portly Indian gentlemen in the bunks beside us. I was on a top (3rd level, right next to the ceiling) bunk right across from Carrie, and most of our “conversation” involved looks of “what the hell are we doing?!?” I journaled by flashlight for a bit, and was just closing my book when a noise ripped through the air. Carrie and I shot each other another famous look, this time accompanied by uncontrollable laughter. The man in the bunk next to Carrie had let out a truly formidable fart! It was absolutely hilarious, as he was asleep and just let it rip!
We went to sleep, then woke up an hour later really needing to pee. This might be too much disclosure for you, but bathrooms on trains are already pretty ridiculous, and let’s remember, this is India, so suck it up and read! Carrie and I somehow telepathically communicated our mutual need, and woke up at the exact same time with the exact same mission. Armed with sanitizer and toilet paper, we headed for the loo. On the way there, we spotted taupe-uniformed dudes with GIANT RIFLES STRAPPED TO THEIR BACKS in the next car over. Thanking the sweet god of American tourism that we were in first class, we reached the bathrooms. Our choices consisted of a squat toilet (that’s essentially a hole in the ground, but they pretty it up with footholds and far-from-stainless steel) and a western toilet which was…let’s go with less than acceptable. We went the native route. I can now check “pee onto Indian train tracks through a metal hole in the train” off my list of things to do before I die. We sanitized ourselves to high heaven and went back to sleep.
I can sleep anywhere, and Dad, let’s face it, you snore like nobody’s business, so I had no problem sleeping through the loudest snoring that Carrie had ever heard. Indian snorers got nothing on you, Dad. I woke up expecting to be there, only to find it was 7:30am. We were not there yet.
How did you know we were not there yet, you ask? We just weren’t. Yup, on these trains there is no announcing stops, no waking people up if you know they’re getting off at a certain place, no signs at the stations, just silent stopping and silent continuing. We had to ask the ticket collectors every time we wanted to know how close we were to Varanasi. He said we’d be there around 10:30. We were pretty much all awake, so we sat down on Sam’s bunk to talk, but just ended up sleeping sitting up instead of lying down.
Varanasi was sort of a weird and unfulfilling day. We didn’t get in until 11, and when we did we were received by several small cars instead of a big bus because Varanasi’s streets are too narrow and crowded to accommodate big buses. We eventually arrived at a hotel to ‘freshen up’ and have lunch, and then got back into the small cars to go…where? We didn’t know because our driver did not speak English and when asked, “So where are we going?” would answer with a blank stare. Not even a Hindi mumble.
Our first mystery destination was the Siwa Temple, a Hindi temple on Varanasi University campus, supposedly the best university in India. The temple was pretty, all stone and inlaid quotes in Hindi and English, my favorite of which involved reincarnation. The quote, taken from the Bhagavad Gita, said, “As a man, casting off worn out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn out bodies, entereth into others that are new.” Reincarnation just makes sense to me in the wide idea of things. It makes sense that certain people have older souls than others, and that compatible souls can find each other. It makes sense in karmic justice terms, that when bad things happen to good people and they persevere, that they will be rewarded in their soul’s future. It makes sense that something as mystical and unknown as a soul should transcend the relatively weak and profane human form. I have less trouble believing in reincarnation than believing in a magical, puffy-cloud-filled land where you hang out in bliss forever or a fire-and-brimstone multi-level cave of dismal eternity. Maybe it’s because as a human, I don’t really like the concept of eternity, because everything’s got to get a little banal eventually, but reincarnation seems like a better way to live beyond your life on earth.
Enough proselytizing. The temple was pretty, but since we didn’t know anything about it, nor did we learn anything about it from our non-English-speaking, non-speaking-at-all “tour guides” (I use the term loosely, as they were really silent chauffeurs), it didn’t really leave us with anything but a general sense of serenity and a red powder fingerprint in the middle of our foreheads. We got back in the cars for our next mystery destination.
Destination number two was the immortal Ganges River. Without so much as a “this is the Ganges” or “Riva Ganga,” we were thrust out of the car and told to be back in 45 minutes. Luckily a social member of our group struck up a conversation with an Indian entrepreneur who offered us a ride in his houseboat. We brought on a 16-year-old English-speaking boy who acted as tour guide (best tour guide of the trip, honestly) and told us the stories and purposes behind the ghats lining the Ganges. Ghats are forms of prayer, and each ghat, named for gods and styles of worship, involves a certain manner of devotion, including yoga or sacrifice. A few of the ghats were burning ghats, where people would gather in public funerals to see the burning and sending off of bodies. Taking pictures at the burning ghats is forbidden and very disrespectful. We learned that everyone is burned but children, pregnant women and criminals, the first two having something to do with flowers, and the third because criminals don’t deserve to be burned on the Ganges ghats as it ensures passage into enlightenment. Our tour was very informative and it was interesting to see people swimming, bathing and washing things in the brown, murky water in which they float their deceased.
Our last mystery stop was Varanasi’s back alleys, to see how silk was made. It would’ve been more interesting if we weren’t rushed through to see the final product at yet another Millionaire Market. We broke kids without Daddy’s credit cards sat outside the market not wanting to be ripped off again. We were in the Muslim district of Varanasi, and this meant that not only were we attracting attention because we were white, but we were attracting attention because we were women NOT wearing burkhas.
First there was a crowd of children begging, but after the shopkeeper literally swatted the children away like flies, there came a new crowd of men and teenage boys just GAWKING at us. We couldn’t go anywhere, as the cars had gone to get our box dinners and there were still people shopping in Rip-Off Palace, so we just had to sit there trying to get our below-the-knee skirts and scarf-covered torsos even more covered up, which didn’t do anything to dispel the crowd, as we were probably the most female skin any of them had seen in their lives, even modestly dressed as we were. As night fell and we got into the cars to go to the train station, we were very happy to be leaving the area, as it was completely devoid of native women and full of shamelessly staring native men.
Our second overnight train was much the same as the first, except much more fun because it arrived on time and arrived much earlier, so most people were still awake and we could play games and talk without annoying people. Less fun was the fact that Carrie and I got screwed out of beds, because the tour company- are you surprised? Another Caretaker caveat- booked two tickets that just said “confirmed”, without specifying a berth. We eventually worked it out, but only after significant anger, ticket-checking and searching up and down 3 train cars. I also slept much better on this train, waking up with just enough time to get everything ready before we got into Delhi. The only problem with this train was that it had a slight insect problem. There were bugs crawling up the walls on occasion, which I did not particularly enjoy, what with my insect phobia and all. But beyond the initial bed-finding issues and the death of many bugs that my shoe is now responsible for, it was otherwise painless.
Now on to my favorite day of all: Delhi. After having to call the tour company on my cell phone (sorry Dad) to find out if they were indeed coming to pick us up (they were), we got on our bus and went to the Hotel Metro Heights, which was nicer and cleaner and generally more fun and hotelly looking than the Hotel Atithi. We ate breakfast, took showers and reveled in both the fact that we had the day to make our own plans and the fact that there were ridiculous Bollywood music videos on our TV. We consulted the very helpful and knowledgeable concierge about where he thought were the coolest places to visit, and decided on the Temple Akshardam, the Guinness World Record-holder for largest Hindu temple complex. At the last minute, we saw two Swiss guys (hereby known as “SwissDudes”) we met at breakfast hanging in the lobby, and invited them along.
IT WAS INCREDIBLE. This temple upstaged the Taj. By a lot. I thought the Taj would affect me emotionally, but it didn’t. Temple Akshardam literally brought tears to my eyes, which I of course did not admit to until Carrie and Katey said they did too. The entire complex is hand-carved marble and sandstone, with unspeakably intricate columns and ceiling design and just ornate carvings on every available surface. The main temple stood in the center, with dark red sandstone arches with the traditional Hindu architecture surrounding it and beautiful green gardens and labyrinthine hedges surrounding those. We turned our shoes in to the shoe guard and walked up the steps, past the carved elephants with visibly different facial expressions and trunk wrinkles, past the black doors with gold-plated designs, and into the temple itself, a carved marble monolith. You could’ve spent two hours in just this relatively small central temple. Every pillar was different, every ceiling section unique. You could’ve spent at least forty-five minutes just lying on the cool floor staring at the ceiling. We thought a bunch of American kids lying on the floor of a temple crowded with Indians was probably socially unacceptable, so we settled for craning our necks for a few minutes.
After exploring the main temple and the surrounding gardens, we bought tickets for an It’s-a-Small-World style boat ride about the history of Indian innovation, which was worth every penny. It was pretty hilarious. According to the narrator, Indians not only invented democracy (true), but discovered gravity “3,000 years before Newton,” correctly estimated the circumference of the Earth “___ years before (whoever that guy was),” and yes, invented the airplane. It was great to see waxen ancient Vedic Indians catatonically pushing a giant steel pill with a propeller attached. Despite its shall we say “liberal” claims, it was a decent use of 15 minutes. Satisfied and serene, we bought some souvenir books (photos in the temple complex were prohibited and we needed something to remember it by) and met our hired-for-the-day-for-only-50-bucks cars. We all went to lunch at Splash and ate some incredible garlic naan and black lentil dal, finished off with a dessert called Gulab (NOT pronounced “jew lab” as Katey and I laughingly referred to it), which is basically a fried dough ball covered in maple syrup.
The drivers then took us to the Red Fort, which looked so much like the Agra Fort that we immediately scrapped it and its unnecessary 250-rupee fee. We tried to get into another temple, but it was Hindus only and it was prayer time. We tried to go into a market, but it was crowded full of intimidating Indians and was clearly not geared for tourists of any kind, let alone white Americans. We hopped back in the cars and asked them to take us to the market, which- can you guess? Can you?- meant yes, the drivers took us to…drumroll please….yet ANOTHER Millionaire Market! We walked inside, saw the mahogany-lined walls, and immediately walked back out. Real India does not do mahogany paneling. We told the drivers no thank you, we did not want to buy anything, and could you please take us back to Metro Heights. They obliged, we thanked them for a day well driven, and headed back up to our rooms.
After a short chill time, we headed back out to discover the markets and shops that were just a few blocks behind our hotel. FINALLY, this was what we had been searching for! A mecca (no pun intended, Indian Muslims!) of pashmina, 150-rupee salwar kameez, saree shops and silk scarves. I bought A LOT of scarves, which many of you will receive as Christmas gifts. I also bought two really printed kameez (shirt-tunic-thingies), one short orange one with red dots and a cool patterned neck and one ¾ sleeved, eggplant-colored one with gold leaves on the neckline. After an unsuccessful hunt for mendhi (henna art), we headed back to the hotel for dinner.
After dinner, we had every intention of hitting up the hookah bar at the nearby Hotel Good Times (I know, ridiculous, right?), but despite the fact that we were the first people to inquire about it, we were far from the first to arrive and it had been overtaken by SASers. We were slow on the uptake because we were enjoying a very stereotypical study abroad experience and had a jam session with SwissDudes. One of them, Vic, could play guitar AND harmonica at the same time and performed a strangely accurate version of “Ring of Fire”. Katey and I harmonized with everything, and even Carrie joined in for a rousing rendition of…I can’t remember what, but it was rousing. Roused, we headed out to our happening hookah bar, were denied, and decided to try out the bar at the Hotel Arpit (yup, we called it the Hotel Armpit, because let’s face it, it’s almost there and this IS India) instead. That was a fun time, Katey and I had a tasty pinot grigio and told our life stories, and then the whole motley crew went back to the hotel for bedtime, as it was midnight and we had to wake up at 4 for our 6:30 flight back to Chennai.
I guess Carrie, Katey and I were more tired than we thought, because my watch alarm did not wake us up, and it was not until 10 after 4 that Eleanor called and said, “Um, I’m getting on the bus. Where are you?” that we BOLTED out of bed, hurriedly shoved everything into our suitcases (except for my bag lock, that’s a souvenir from me to India), and ran down the stairs and onto the bus. There were people still drunk from the night (well, few hours) before, so our sober if not chipper selves were far from the last people on the bus. Everyone made it on the bus and the plane, and we flew back to Chennai while watching What Happens in Vegas, which was less crappy than I thought it would be, but probably only because I haven’t seen an actual movie in two months.
Back at the airport, we were left to our own devices to transport ourselves back to the ship. We hired two cabs, but mistakenly gave them the Port Agent address instead of the ship’s Madras Harbor, Gate 7 address. We confusedly arrived at the Port Agent, solved the mystery of why we were not at the ship, and pointed out the real destination, Madras Harbor. This apparently is not a thing, as the cab dude had no clue where it was. We got out and started walking, thinking it was fairly close as we saw Gate 5 right next to the Port Agent. We figured out that it was apparently not nearby, and got into auto rickshaws to suck it up and have them drive us there. They did not know what we were talking about. A little panicked, very tired, and laden with baggage, we tried not to hyperventilate through several wrong turns and a direction-asking, and eventually arrived safely at Gate 7 and boarded the ship.
WHOO! How is that for a comprehensive explanation of five days of my life? I don’t think that was even comprehensive. I could’ve written more, but I’m sure you’ve banged your head against your keyboard after the last three ports, asking “Why? Why are her posts so long? Why do I feel like taking a nap after reading this?” so I will spare you any more. You can look forward to a post on the joys of Penang and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in about a week. Maybe by that time you’ll be done reading this one.
Perhaps I will do a second post once I’ve processed. That is not likely though, as we get to Malaysia in a paltry two days and then it is off again, for FDPs and Kuala Lumpur for a couple days with Katey, Eleanor, Sam Squared (there are two, they are friends), Carrie & Marcella. I’m pretty sure Carla, Mark, Josh and Trevor are coming too, so we may just have a giant SAS clustermess of friendship happening. We shall see.
But INDIA. As I had read in many a Semester @ Sea blog before I embarked, the first thing I noticed about India was the smell. However, unlike the many previous blogs, mine came not from the country, but from some sort of putrid gasoline noxious death odor that a) WOKE ME UP because it was so disgusting and b) forced me to continue my attempts at sleep with the sheet over my nose so that I could breathe without dying. Once out of the engine room and off the ship, however, India smelled just fine. I guess the best way to describe it IS that it smells, but it smells like lots of different things in different areas. Whatever is smells like is multiplied by the humidity, and the smells I inhaled included pervasive sulfur/eggs, MASSES of unwashed people everywhere (more on that later), masala and spices, and a bevy of other more befuddling odors that were neither here nor there.
I think the most salient fact about India that I found was that there are so. many. people. I know, I know, anyone who’s wikipedia’d India knows that it is full of people and has the 2nd highest population in the world smushed into the size of 3 Texases. But there are really lots of people everywhere all the time. They are driving and cycling and motoring and rickshawing and walking and limping and lying in the street 24/7. This appears to have diminished their concept of personal space, as they seem to have no problem with elbowing you or whooshing past you without a flicker of an idea that they’ve even touched you. The men like to stare you down and the women appear to be indifferent, which we found refreshing (the women, not the men).
Indian women are beautiful. They take such pride in their appearance; they always have gorgeous, ornately beaded or patterned sarees or salwar kameez (a sort of flowy patterned pantsuit, I bought a few tops so you will all see them upon my return), a lot of them have bindi on their foreheads, some have mendhi on their hands and arms, and most of them are genuinely stunning.
I’ve realized that Indians (and South Africans) choose their expenses very differently than Americans. As Americans, I think the most “check out my socioeconomic status” symbol we have is our house. Buying a house is a huge deal in the US, and I think it is not a blanket statement to say that nearly everyone dreams of eventually owning their own house. This whole subprime loan/mortgage fiasco is absolute proof of the fact that getting a house often trumps true financial responsibility. In South Africa, there are people with steady jobs and Volvos staying in the townships, not because they can’t afford to move but because that is their community. In India, there is an absolutely terrible infrastructure, dirt and pollution everywhere, yet even the woman begging on the street is wearing a beautiful red saree with gold flowers and beading. Even the men that sleep on flattened cardboard boxes in the Agra streets wear clean khakis and tailored, collared shirts. I think pride and strength primarily belong to the inner self, but I also think everyone needs something to show the outside world that they are proud and strong.
This is completely unrelated to India, self-centered and self-congratulatory, but I was getting worried about getting dumber as I got older. I just didn’t care about “the issues” or current events like I thought I should. SAS has absolutely changed that. I am following the election for the first time ever, I read the NY times online every day we’re at sea (and not just the articles about Angelina Jolie). I know reasons why we are in this financial crisis, and I have opinions on how to fix it. I don’t know if I care more because it makes me feel closer to my home country or because having my eyes opened to just how privileged I am makes me feel more responsibility toward taking advantage of all that I have, but I honestly feel that I have gotten smarter and more aware as a result of being here.
I guess I will try and be chronological from this point on. So, here goes: First day. We get off the ship with an hour or two to kill before we meet to go to the airport, so Sam Squared (two Sams, they’re friends, we’ll call one Sam and one TinySam), Sam’s roomie Kress and I hop in a rickshaw (the car kind, not the bike kind) and go on a mini exploration of Chennai. We pretty much just wanted to see the sights, so we didn’t mind when the driver took us to a few shops (where he gets commission when we buy things) that were almost stupidly expensive (20 US dollars for a pashmina scarf? I can get one for $10 on Canal St, please). We would later mind these Millionaire Markets (“bazaar” my ass). We would mind very much.
That’s another thing I noticed about Indians. They think we are all filthy rich. Our first rickshaw driver, our “tour guide” (that’s a whole other story that you will read), and anyone who tried to sell us anything assumed that $165 for a comforter was totally okay. I AM IN COLLEGE! I AM BROKE ALL THE TIME. I HAVE NO MONEY. EVER. I worked my sweet booty off all summer, but I didn’t manage a hedge fund or star in a big-budget movie, so NO, I cannot afford your handcrafted silk rugs ($200 for 12”x12”), incredibly beautiful and oh-so-soft as they are.
Anyway, as this was early in the game, we were okay with just looking around. We tooled around in the rickshaw that had been promised to us for 100 rupees for an hour or so, then Sam and I headed back to the ship to catch our plane, dropping TinySam and Kress off at a normal-price market on the way. The rickshaw driver dropped us off at the port and said, “2000 rupees”. 1000 rupees each? That’s $20. Each. NO WAY, Jose. Or more appropriately, No dish, Rajesh. We (and he) recognized the ridiculosity of this monetary claim, and talked him down to a still stupid but highly manageable 400 rupees each (about $8). We walked back to the ship, joined our 47-person tour group, and got into shuttle busses (filled with mosquitoes and hot as anything) to go to the Chennai airport for our flight to Delhi.
Before I begin the tale of our Agra-Varanasi-Delhi tour, let me say that we were completely ripped off. There were points over the tour’s three days where I was absolutely livid at the crappiness of the service and information (or lack thereof) that we were receiving. We paid an exorbitant amount of money for things that, when itemized by us, amounted to about half the price we actually paid. Our tickets into the Taj and Agra Fort were not included, we had NO guides (just drivers who did not speak English or explain where they were taking you, including one who got lost) in Varanasi, and absolutely no guidance whatsoever in Delhi (which was the best day of all, further irritating us, as it advanced our belief that we could’ve done it ourselves without stupid Caretaker Tours.) Let me tell you, Caretaker did not take care with us, and I think most people in the group would warn against anyone using them in SAS’s future. We paid a $190 supplemental fee on top of our already expensive main fee, supposedly for train tickets, which we then found out cost 700 rupees, roughly $15. I am writing them an email asking for an itemized list of where our money went on behalf of the group, along with writing and encouraging others to write…let’s go with “strongly worded” emails about our intense dissatisfaction. In actuality, the only thing anyone was upset about was that we paid too much. If Caretaker gave me $400 back, I would be 100% happy with our tour. I think you should get what you pay for, and with what we paid, we should’ve been staying IN the freakin’ Taj.
Now to stop complaining and start explaining: our flight went off without a hitch, Indian airports are just like US airports, and we arrived in Delhi ready for our two-hour drive to Agra. Oh, how mistaken we were. The tour guides told us that our two-hour drive to Agra was actually a four-hour drive to Agra. Well, the four-hour drive to Agra turned into a six-hour drive to Agra, and by the time we collapsed into our beds at the Hotel Atithi for four hours of sleep before breakfast and the Taj, we were too tired to care, about the drive or about how our toilet wouldn’t flush and there was some kind of strange purple stain on Carrie’s bottom sheet. Mom, you would’ve had an absolute CONNIPTION. It was clean, but by Indian terms, anything that isn’t covered in dirt is clean. I’ve been spoiled by all the Marriots and Sheratons of my golden youth.
Next morning we had an uneventful breakfast. I had toast and cereal, finished the bowl, found black flecks in my milk, and remarked on this only to have Carrie interject “Oh yeah, my econ professor said not to eat dairy here because their pasteurization is weird.” Great timing. I’m still here though, so I guess it wasn’t too weird. We got into our bus and Taj’d it up. The Taj was just as austere and beautiful as it looks in pictures, a huge white temple made completely of marble and inlaid semi-precious stones. We got a little background story about the “white palace”, which is actually a mausoleum, from our guide Ali, then walked around for a bit just staring at it from all different angles. I thought I would be more bowled over by its awesomeness than I was, but it was still amazing to see. It was later upstaged by the Temple Ashkardam, but as we’re going chronologically, you will have to wait for that. It is very white and marbular (shut up, it’s a word today). I really have nothing to say beyond “We saw the Taj,” because that was pretty much it. It is nice that a guy would build a giant white marble temple to fulfill his wife’s dying wish, but as she bore 14 of the guy’s children, he kind of had to respect her wishes. I guess in Hindi V’s are pronounced like W’s, because the guide kept talking about “Wisitors” to the temple, which Carrie & I found hilarious because the first place our brains went was wizards and Harry Potter. We also made a platform 9 ¾ joke at the train station that night, because yes, we are that cool. We’ve started a count of the incredibly nerdy Harry Potter references we make throughout the course of our travels, and we usually score at least two on a good day.
After the Taj we went to the Agra Fort, which is where the Indian army used to drill, and where Taj Mahal dude’s son locked his father up so that he couldn’t mess with the son’s reign. The fort was all red sandstone and marble courtyards and very pretty and ornately carved archways and such. There was a great view of the Taj from one side of the fort. My personal favorite part was when we went to leave and found a small park-type thing FILLED WITH MONKEYS. It was AMAZING. I was seriously less than two feet away from wild Indian monkeys. There were tiny baby monkeys playing and wrestling and adult monkeys hanging out and loping about. There had to be at least fifty, including a few that snuck up the walls of the fort RIGHT behind us. I have at least 30 pictures of monkeys. They really are like tiny, less evolved humans. Score one for Darwin.
The city of Agra seems fairly small but almost suburban, with a dichotomy of paved roads, roadside “bottle shops” and cows meandering through the streets, or a leprosy treatment/study center with a parade of goats running down the sidewalk in front. It seemed far less hectic than Delhi or Varanasi. At one point on our way to Agra Fort, a school-age kid in his shirt-and-tie uniform hitched a ride on our bus- by holding on to the bus with one hand and steering his BICYCLE with the other. It was pretty funny; I got a great picture. In our Agra travels, we also saw a snake charmer (really) and two guys riding an elephant! I was not as happy with that, as they were hitting the poor dear with a stick and making it ride around a city instead of a jungle, but it was still very cool to see.
We drove back to the Hotel Atithi, ate a tasty buffet dinner, checked out, and got back in the bus to go to a bazaar before heading for the train station for our midnight (okay 9pm) train to Varanasi. We, the unknowing collegiates, expected our fine tour guides to guide us to a market where we could buy local handicrafts, only to be led YET AGAIN to a place where they jack up the prices 200% from what they should be. Oh, the naiveté! Fortunately/Unfortunately a fair number of SAS students are rather wealthy, and there were a few that went absolutely berserk buying things. The shopkeepers did give us free soda, though. That was a nice touch.
On to the train! We had no clue what to expect from an Indian overnight train, and our pampered American brains expected mattress pads and pristine quarters. We had to wait to find out, because the 8:30 train was delayed to 9, and then 9:30, and finally arrived around 10. Before arrival, the station decided to change the train’s platform from one to two so it wouldn’t collide with another train arriving (on time) around the same time. Now normally, a train changing platforms means you have to get your stuff, wander over to an elevator or stairway, and cross a bridge to take you to the other side. Oh no. This is India, where you grab your bag and WALK ACROSS THE TRACKS. There was a bridge, but we went with the when-in-Rome approach and ran our adrenaline-pumped little bodies across the tracks and climbed up on the other side. This had its pros (much quicker and more direct) and its cons (the bridge had about 20 monkeys climbing all over it, which we missed). When the dirty, sooty, bug-ridden baby blue Marudhar Express pulled up with sweltering denizens inside cramped berths, we were officially worried. One of the hardest things to get used to in India was that EVERYTHING was dirty. We must’ve run through a normal person’s year’s supply of Purell.
We cautiously, nervously boarded the train, our expectations forcibly lowering with every step. Our large group of 47 was split into 3 groups, and my friends and I were a group of 10, which was further split throughout one train car. Luckily our sleeper car was air conditioned. We found our numbered berths and set our backpacks and bags down on the blue vinyl bunks bordered by cold metal walls. The train had arrived late enough that most of the passengers were already asleep, which added to our trepidation, as we had the snoring of two portly Indian gentlemen in the bunks beside us. I was on a top (3rd level, right next to the ceiling) bunk right across from Carrie, and most of our “conversation” involved looks of “what the hell are we doing?!?” I journaled by flashlight for a bit, and was just closing my book when a noise ripped through the air. Carrie and I shot each other another famous look, this time accompanied by uncontrollable laughter. The man in the bunk next to Carrie had let out a truly formidable fart! It was absolutely hilarious, as he was asleep and just let it rip!
We went to sleep, then woke up an hour later really needing to pee. This might be too much disclosure for you, but bathrooms on trains are already pretty ridiculous, and let’s remember, this is India, so suck it up and read! Carrie and I somehow telepathically communicated our mutual need, and woke up at the exact same time with the exact same mission. Armed with sanitizer and toilet paper, we headed for the loo. On the way there, we spotted taupe-uniformed dudes with GIANT RIFLES STRAPPED TO THEIR BACKS in the next car over. Thanking the sweet god of American tourism that we were in first class, we reached the bathrooms. Our choices consisted of a squat toilet (that’s essentially a hole in the ground, but they pretty it up with footholds and far-from-stainless steel) and a western toilet which was…let’s go with less than acceptable. We went the native route. I can now check “pee onto Indian train tracks through a metal hole in the train” off my list of things to do before I die. We sanitized ourselves to high heaven and went back to sleep.
I can sleep anywhere, and Dad, let’s face it, you snore like nobody’s business, so I had no problem sleeping through the loudest snoring that Carrie had ever heard. Indian snorers got nothing on you, Dad. I woke up expecting to be there, only to find it was 7:30am. We were not there yet.
How did you know we were not there yet, you ask? We just weren’t. Yup, on these trains there is no announcing stops, no waking people up if you know they’re getting off at a certain place, no signs at the stations, just silent stopping and silent continuing. We had to ask the ticket collectors every time we wanted to know how close we were to Varanasi. He said we’d be there around 10:30. We were pretty much all awake, so we sat down on Sam’s bunk to talk, but just ended up sleeping sitting up instead of lying down.
Varanasi was sort of a weird and unfulfilling day. We didn’t get in until 11, and when we did we were received by several small cars instead of a big bus because Varanasi’s streets are too narrow and crowded to accommodate big buses. We eventually arrived at a hotel to ‘freshen up’ and have lunch, and then got back into the small cars to go…where? We didn’t know because our driver did not speak English and when asked, “So where are we going?” would answer with a blank stare. Not even a Hindi mumble.
Our first mystery destination was the Siwa Temple, a Hindi temple on Varanasi University campus, supposedly the best university in India. The temple was pretty, all stone and inlaid quotes in Hindi and English, my favorite of which involved reincarnation. The quote, taken from the Bhagavad Gita, said, “As a man, casting off worn out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn out bodies, entereth into others that are new.” Reincarnation just makes sense to me in the wide idea of things. It makes sense that certain people have older souls than others, and that compatible souls can find each other. It makes sense in karmic justice terms, that when bad things happen to good people and they persevere, that they will be rewarded in their soul’s future. It makes sense that something as mystical and unknown as a soul should transcend the relatively weak and profane human form. I have less trouble believing in reincarnation than believing in a magical, puffy-cloud-filled land where you hang out in bliss forever or a fire-and-brimstone multi-level cave of dismal eternity. Maybe it’s because as a human, I don’t really like the concept of eternity, because everything’s got to get a little banal eventually, but reincarnation seems like a better way to live beyond your life on earth.
Enough proselytizing. The temple was pretty, but since we didn’t know anything about it, nor did we learn anything about it from our non-English-speaking, non-speaking-at-all “tour guides” (I use the term loosely, as they were really silent chauffeurs), it didn’t really leave us with anything but a general sense of serenity and a red powder fingerprint in the middle of our foreheads. We got back in the cars for our next mystery destination.
Destination number two was the immortal Ganges River. Without so much as a “this is the Ganges” or “Riva Ganga,” we were thrust out of the car and told to be back in 45 minutes. Luckily a social member of our group struck up a conversation with an Indian entrepreneur who offered us a ride in his houseboat. We brought on a 16-year-old English-speaking boy who acted as tour guide (best tour guide of the trip, honestly) and told us the stories and purposes behind the ghats lining the Ganges. Ghats are forms of prayer, and each ghat, named for gods and styles of worship, involves a certain manner of devotion, including yoga or sacrifice. A few of the ghats were burning ghats, where people would gather in public funerals to see the burning and sending off of bodies. Taking pictures at the burning ghats is forbidden and very disrespectful. We learned that everyone is burned but children, pregnant women and criminals, the first two having something to do with flowers, and the third because criminals don’t deserve to be burned on the Ganges ghats as it ensures passage into enlightenment. Our tour was very informative and it was interesting to see people swimming, bathing and washing things in the brown, murky water in which they float their deceased.
Our last mystery stop was Varanasi’s back alleys, to see how silk was made. It would’ve been more interesting if we weren’t rushed through to see the final product at yet another Millionaire Market. We broke kids without Daddy’s credit cards sat outside the market not wanting to be ripped off again. We were in the Muslim district of Varanasi, and this meant that not only were we attracting attention because we were white, but we were attracting attention because we were women NOT wearing burkhas.
First there was a crowd of children begging, but after the shopkeeper literally swatted the children away like flies, there came a new crowd of men and teenage boys just GAWKING at us. We couldn’t go anywhere, as the cars had gone to get our box dinners and there were still people shopping in Rip-Off Palace, so we just had to sit there trying to get our below-the-knee skirts and scarf-covered torsos even more covered up, which didn’t do anything to dispel the crowd, as we were probably the most female skin any of them had seen in their lives, even modestly dressed as we were. As night fell and we got into the cars to go to the train station, we were very happy to be leaving the area, as it was completely devoid of native women and full of shamelessly staring native men.
Our second overnight train was much the same as the first, except much more fun because it arrived on time and arrived much earlier, so most people were still awake and we could play games and talk without annoying people. Less fun was the fact that Carrie and I got screwed out of beds, because the tour company- are you surprised? Another Caretaker caveat- booked two tickets that just said “confirmed”, without specifying a berth. We eventually worked it out, but only after significant anger, ticket-checking and searching up and down 3 train cars. I also slept much better on this train, waking up with just enough time to get everything ready before we got into Delhi. The only problem with this train was that it had a slight insect problem. There were bugs crawling up the walls on occasion, which I did not particularly enjoy, what with my insect phobia and all. But beyond the initial bed-finding issues and the death of many bugs that my shoe is now responsible for, it was otherwise painless.
Now on to my favorite day of all: Delhi. After having to call the tour company on my cell phone (sorry Dad) to find out if they were indeed coming to pick us up (they were), we got on our bus and went to the Hotel Metro Heights, which was nicer and cleaner and generally more fun and hotelly looking than the Hotel Atithi. We ate breakfast, took showers and reveled in both the fact that we had the day to make our own plans and the fact that there were ridiculous Bollywood music videos on our TV. We consulted the very helpful and knowledgeable concierge about where he thought were the coolest places to visit, and decided on the Temple Akshardam, the Guinness World Record-holder for largest Hindu temple complex. At the last minute, we saw two Swiss guys (hereby known as “SwissDudes”) we met at breakfast hanging in the lobby, and invited them along.
IT WAS INCREDIBLE. This temple upstaged the Taj. By a lot. I thought the Taj would affect me emotionally, but it didn’t. Temple Akshardam literally brought tears to my eyes, which I of course did not admit to until Carrie and Katey said they did too. The entire complex is hand-carved marble and sandstone, with unspeakably intricate columns and ceiling design and just ornate carvings on every available surface. The main temple stood in the center, with dark red sandstone arches with the traditional Hindu architecture surrounding it and beautiful green gardens and labyrinthine hedges surrounding those. We turned our shoes in to the shoe guard and walked up the steps, past the carved elephants with visibly different facial expressions and trunk wrinkles, past the black doors with gold-plated designs, and into the temple itself, a carved marble monolith. You could’ve spent two hours in just this relatively small central temple. Every pillar was different, every ceiling section unique. You could’ve spent at least forty-five minutes just lying on the cool floor staring at the ceiling. We thought a bunch of American kids lying on the floor of a temple crowded with Indians was probably socially unacceptable, so we settled for craning our necks for a few minutes.
After exploring the main temple and the surrounding gardens, we bought tickets for an It’s-a-Small-World style boat ride about the history of Indian innovation, which was worth every penny. It was pretty hilarious. According to the narrator, Indians not only invented democracy (true), but discovered gravity “3,000 years before Newton,” correctly estimated the circumference of the Earth “___ years before (whoever that guy was),” and yes, invented the airplane. It was great to see waxen ancient Vedic Indians catatonically pushing a giant steel pill with a propeller attached. Despite its shall we say “liberal” claims, it was a decent use of 15 minutes. Satisfied and serene, we bought some souvenir books (photos in the temple complex were prohibited and we needed something to remember it by) and met our hired-for-the-day-for-only-50-bucks cars. We all went to lunch at Splash and ate some incredible garlic naan and black lentil dal, finished off with a dessert called Gulab (NOT pronounced “jew lab” as Katey and I laughingly referred to it), which is basically a fried dough ball covered in maple syrup.
The drivers then took us to the Red Fort, which looked so much like the Agra Fort that we immediately scrapped it and its unnecessary 250-rupee fee. We tried to get into another temple, but it was Hindus only and it was prayer time. We tried to go into a market, but it was crowded full of intimidating Indians and was clearly not geared for tourists of any kind, let alone white Americans. We hopped back in the cars and asked them to take us to the market, which- can you guess? Can you?- meant yes, the drivers took us to…drumroll please….yet ANOTHER Millionaire Market! We walked inside, saw the mahogany-lined walls, and immediately walked back out. Real India does not do mahogany paneling. We told the drivers no thank you, we did not want to buy anything, and could you please take us back to Metro Heights. They obliged, we thanked them for a day well driven, and headed back up to our rooms.
After a short chill time, we headed back out to discover the markets and shops that were just a few blocks behind our hotel. FINALLY, this was what we had been searching for! A mecca (no pun intended, Indian Muslims!) of pashmina, 150-rupee salwar kameez, saree shops and silk scarves. I bought A LOT of scarves, which many of you will receive as Christmas gifts. I also bought two really printed kameez (shirt-tunic-thingies), one short orange one with red dots and a cool patterned neck and one ¾ sleeved, eggplant-colored one with gold leaves on the neckline. After an unsuccessful hunt for mendhi (henna art), we headed back to the hotel for dinner.
After dinner, we had every intention of hitting up the hookah bar at the nearby Hotel Good Times (I know, ridiculous, right?), but despite the fact that we were the first people to inquire about it, we were far from the first to arrive and it had been overtaken by SASers. We were slow on the uptake because we were enjoying a very stereotypical study abroad experience and had a jam session with SwissDudes. One of them, Vic, could play guitar AND harmonica at the same time and performed a strangely accurate version of “Ring of Fire”. Katey and I harmonized with everything, and even Carrie joined in for a rousing rendition of…I can’t remember what, but it was rousing. Roused, we headed out to our happening hookah bar, were denied, and decided to try out the bar at the Hotel Arpit (yup, we called it the Hotel Armpit, because let’s face it, it’s almost there and this IS India) instead. That was a fun time, Katey and I had a tasty pinot grigio and told our life stories, and then the whole motley crew went back to the hotel for bedtime, as it was midnight and we had to wake up at 4 for our 6:30 flight back to Chennai.
I guess Carrie, Katey and I were more tired than we thought, because my watch alarm did not wake us up, and it was not until 10 after 4 that Eleanor called and said, “Um, I’m getting on the bus. Where are you?” that we BOLTED out of bed, hurriedly shoved everything into our suitcases (except for my bag lock, that’s a souvenir from me to India), and ran down the stairs and onto the bus. There were people still drunk from the night (well, few hours) before, so our sober if not chipper selves were far from the last people on the bus. Everyone made it on the bus and the plane, and we flew back to Chennai while watching What Happens in Vegas, which was less crappy than I thought it would be, but probably only because I haven’t seen an actual movie in two months.
Back at the airport, we were left to our own devices to transport ourselves back to the ship. We hired two cabs, but mistakenly gave them the Port Agent address instead of the ship’s Madras Harbor, Gate 7 address. We confusedly arrived at the Port Agent, solved the mystery of why we were not at the ship, and pointed out the real destination, Madras Harbor. This apparently is not a thing, as the cab dude had no clue where it was. We got out and started walking, thinking it was fairly close as we saw Gate 5 right next to the Port Agent. We figured out that it was apparently not nearby, and got into auto rickshaws to suck it up and have them drive us there. They did not know what we were talking about. A little panicked, very tired, and laden with baggage, we tried not to hyperventilate through several wrong turns and a direction-asking, and eventually arrived safely at Gate 7 and boarded the ship.
WHOO! How is that for a comprehensive explanation of five days of my life? I don’t think that was even comprehensive. I could’ve written more, but I’m sure you’ve banged your head against your keyboard after the last three ports, asking “Why? Why are her posts so long? Why do I feel like taking a nap after reading this?” so I will spare you any more. You can look forward to a post on the joys of Penang and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in about a week. Maybe by that time you’ll be done reading this one.
04 October 2008
Lesson Nine: How to Climb Mountains and Feed Children
So, I was really bad about journaling in South Africa, and by really bad I mean I didn’t journal at all, so this will neither be as long nor as detailed as Namibia, because I was really great at journaling there. Sorry it's all in one chunk, but i've dechunkified it twice and the internet screws up, so I'm not wasting my time. deal with it.
I really enjoyed my time in Africa. While Cape Town felt very European and safe because you could do whatever you wanted and never have to leave the port area, it was easy to become complacent and miss out on a real African experience. We pretty much stuck to the touristy stuff, but it was a good time nonetheless. I think when you are young and female and white, your ability to really go out among the people is limited because of safety issues.
That said, the fact that apartheid only ended 14 years ago speaks to enormous progress on South Africa’s part. I think the rest of the world helped it, as the US’ big civil rights struggle came decades before (and even before that, Civil War-wise), and Europe is far ahead of the US (and therefore everywhere else) in terms of race relations. Our guide on the wine tour (more on that later) gave us a really honest and detailed explanation of his opinions of race in South Africa, which was refreshing because often people that have been on the causal end of civil struggle (he was white) have the tendency to gloss over their part in it with the “cog in the machine” defense. He clearly still had some bias about native Africans, but he seemed genuinely concerned and a little embarrassed about that bias, and it was nice that he shared that with us, as no one wants to admit they’re a racist.
It was really nice to just stay in one place for a week. We were still clearly tourists, but we had a little more time to learn the port and plan things out and generally get our bearings. It is amazing to be able to go to all these countries in just one semester, but only going for four or five days at a time really cuts down on your ability to interact with locals and learn the culture, simply because- like you would do your first week or two in any new locale- we need that time to do the tourist stuff. Even the tourist stuff is really cool, like touring the wine country and hiking table mountain, but it does take time. If we were in one place for the whole semester, we’d have time to get comfortable in our neighborhood, meet some local friends, etc. but being as migrant as we are we’ve really only got time for the essentials.
Now I will try and go through my adventures as chronologically as possible. Sorry in advance if the rest of this makes you feel like I’m talking to you like you’re dumb, I just finished the kids’ blog about Namibia so I’m still in “hey there little pirates!” mode.
Okay, first day: We got off the ship after relatively little hassle. Carrie and Marcella both had FDPs (the field practica, teacher-led educational business), so I went to lunch and the aquarium with my friend Jenny. The aquarium was pretty cool. We got there just in time to see them feed the penguins, which were SO CUTE. Right after that, they announced they were feeding the turtle and the rays in the “predator tank”, so of course we went to see that. It was pretty awesome.
They trained this 20-year-old turtle to bonk a black and white disc thing with its head, and when it did, they fed it. Smart turtle. There were a few rays in the tank, but one ENORMOUS ray weighed over 450lbs. Seriously huge. When it went to get its food (from people scuba diving IN THE PREDATOR TANK WITH SHARKS, coolest job ever), it completely overtook the diver until you could no longer see her behind the huge ray. I guess a lot of the time the sharks decide they are hungry for the rays lunch, and although the sharks only eat once a week, and sometimes as little as every three weeks, they try to nibble on lunch that is not theirs. It is the second diver’s job to POKE THE SHARKS WITH A STICK to get them to go away. I don’t know about her, but I would be sure I had great insurance.
The aquarium was pretty small, but the predator tank was huge and round and had floor-to-ceiling warp-proof plastic, so it was really cool to see absolutely everything. There was also an amazing “kelp forest” with huge stands of brown kelp just swaying in the underwater-fan-induced breeze, with huge fish and a big school of tiny fish just floating about. I took some great pictures that I’m sure I will force you to sit down and look at for hours on end when I get home.
That night, we hit up Mitchell’s Pub, which yes I know, is a Scottish pub in South Africa, not very indigenous of me, but it was close to the port and made a magical libation called “Old Wobbly”, which is a particularly apt description of their 22-proof beer. We went out to dinner at a nice restaurant in the enormous right-next-to-the-ship mall- I had a tasty but relatively unremarkable seafood platter. Only awesome thing is, the US has only the calamari rings and squid babies, but they have entire calamari STEAKS in SA. I had what looked like mozzarella sticks of calamari that was tender and delicious and not at all chewy as US calamari is sometimes found to be.
The next day was spent in general exploration of the Cape Towny harbor area, just walking around and popping into the odd store. We went back to the ship for lunch and decided to hit up a rugby game that (we thought) was happening at Newlands stadium very nearby. Nine of us (I knew Marcella obviously, and Steph and Emily, my friends from voyage book) took two cabs-yes, we were cramped- to Newlands, arriving there nice and early at 1:30 for the 3pm kickoff. NO ONE WAS THERE. Obviously something was amiss. What was amiss was that the game was not at Newlands anymore, but had been changed to some other stadium near Stellenbosch, a town about half an hour away. Well, the cab drivers said sure, we’ll take you there and then hang out while you watch the game, then take you back. It took us an hour and a half to get there. Our cab guy was driving SUPER slowly and had almost no gas left, plus he didn’t really know how to get there and was following the other cab dude. We finally got there, watched the rugby game- which was SO BADASS, rugby is hardcore- and then headed back to the taxis. The ride back took only 45 minutes, including a stop for gas and a scenic drive through the winelands. It was an amusing misadventure. Rugby is awesome and crazy and violently entertaining.
Sunday during the day was spent climbing Table Mountain, which was awesome. We took a cab to the bottom and started a two-hour hike past gorgeous waterfalls, seriously steep rock stairs, and a few “scenic vista” stops for Carrie to use her inhaler, as the air started thinning and having our friend fall off Table Mountain due to asthma would really put a damper on our Sunday. It was actually pretty tough going, as it was mostly straight up, with slight terracing and a few giant rocks to step on. The view from the top was PHENOMENAL. We saw Cape Town on one side and cliffs and the gorgeous blue ocean on the other. We took the cable car down, which rotated as it went down the mountain for optimum 360-degree gorgeousness.
Sunday night they had 50% off cocktails and sushi at this gorgeous and amazing restaurant, Sevruga. Their rainbow rolls were the best I have ever had, and they had these things called salmon roses, with a little salmon rolled with a bit of rice on top, plus some aioli and roe…so tasty. I missed sushi, and while I wanted to hold back and wait until Japan so I could taste the real deal, this was too good to pass up. Nikki, you will be proud of me- I even tried salmon and tuna sashimi, and loved it! Not loved the tuna, but it was okay, and I really loved the salmon. I also had a fantastic blood orange mojito that I am going to try my best to recreate for you upon my return. Later we went to this restaurant called Quay 4 and partook of a 3.5 liter beer (don’t worry, it was a large group)…it was awesome.
On Monday me, Carrie, Marcella and our friend Sam did Operation Hunger, which was absolutely incredible. It was not so incredible that my camera died ten minutes in, but it worked out fine. Operation Hunger’s mission is to weigh and assess the nutrition of kidlets in the townships, along with distributing food to community kitchens in the area. We spent the morning weighing about 30-some kids at a “crèche” (French actually, for nursery/day care) in the township called Los Angeles. Yes, that’s right. “LA” is just outside the big Cape Town township of Khayelitsha. We spent most of our time playing with the kids. Someone very smart brought balloons, which were a HUGE hit. The kids also really liked seeing their pictures in everyone’s digital cameras. It was so funny to see their faces light up when they recognized themselves, especially because when you took a picture of them they would either not smile or do the no-teeth not-really-smiling smile, and then bust out laughing when you showed them. We did the same thing at another, smaller crèche in Green Park, then stopped for lunch. We had box lunches, but we decided to donate them to the Green Park community food center and buy our lunches at the rest stop instead. I wish I could say this was 100% due to our altruism, but it was at least in part due to the fact that the sandwiches looked less than appetizing. Not bad like rotten, but our pampered American taste buds craved Wimpy burgers.
No matter the means, our donations had a very good end, as the kitchen workers were out and so the kids would’ve been stuck with no food. Thanks to our lunches, we were able to feed all of the kids at least a little something- a piece of sandwich, some biscuits, hunks of apple. The program director told us that most of the time, whatever the kids can scrounge up at the food center is their food for the day, and that if we hadn’t brought our lunches, the kids may not have eaten. It felt really good to be able to feed the kids, play with them, and hear them sing, it was fun to interact with them and I think they had fun hanging with us, too. Another bonus- the Green Park community has made huge strides in the last two years, as at that time, Operation Hunger found over 90% of the crèche’s children to be malnourished and this year, there were none.
Tuesday I went to Robben Island. After a very bumpy ferry ride that I almost threw up on, I got to walk through Robben Island prison and see the cell in which Nelson Mandela stayed for 13 years. In Apartheid days, the prison separated the political prisoners into followers in dorm-style cells and leaders in single cells. Mandela was in a small single cell of his own, as he was deemed someone the other political prisoners may rally around and get organized.
The most moving part of the trip for me was actually not Mandela’s cell, but the private prison complex of Robert Sobukwe. Very few people, even Black South Africans know Sobukwe’s name, despite the fact that he was Apartheid government’s Public Enemy #1. He was a proponent of non-violent protest, and when all Black and Coloured South Africans had to carry passbooks stating where they could and could not go, he arranged for a symbolic burning of all the passbooks in a single day. Unfortunately, what was meant to be a peaceful rally became the Sharpeville massacre. Police eventually opened fire on the protestors, continuing to shoot even as they ran away. Sobukwe was arrested and kept in one prison or another until his death from cancer at age 46. During his time on Robben Island, he was kept in isolation and silence, guarded by two wardens every second of every day. He died four years before the end of Apartheid, and was never able to see that he had anything but a tragic impact on Black civil rights in South Africa. I honestly got a little teary as the tour guide was telling the story, because I’ve certainly never heard of Robert Sobukwe, but now that I have, I am not likely to forget him. After that very upsetting tale, we saw a flock of really cute penguins congregating on the side of the road! Then we left.
Wednesday meant an AMAZING wine tour in Paarl (means Pearl, named so because of the smoothish rocks in the vicinity), Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. This was honestly the highlight of South Africa for me. The views of the gorgeous mountains with vineyards in front, the adorable village of Franschhoek and eating lunch in the best restaurant in Africa (seriously. Thanks, Wikipedia!) made it a super day. It was also a super day because of all the wine. We started off at KWV, which actually buys and distributes wine from a bunch of different Paarl-area vineyards, but also makes amazing brandies and a little wine of its own. Here, we learned how to pair food and wine by tasting foods that fit into broad categories like bitter (arugula), acidic (lemon), savoury (Marmite, which tastes like a thick soy sauce, on a cracker), salty (blue cheese, which I still do not enjoy) and sweet (shortbread, yum!), and then tasting the different wines to see how their flavor changed according to the foods. It was very informative, I learned a lot, and it was a good way to start off because it got us all thinking about how to taste well. Our tour guide was cool (above mentioned Afrikaner)- it was just me, Carrie, Marcella and an older Irish man named Phillip, who was not very talkative but improved in that respect as the tastings continued.
We went to LaMotte next, which makes the most delicious Sauvignon Blanc- I honestly tasted zingy green apples, a flavor I picked out thanks to our handy “this is what this should taste like” sheets. I definitely want to try and find it somewhere in the US.
We stopped for lunch in Franschhoek at Le Quartier Francais, which according to Food & Wine is the 50th best restaurant IN THE WORLD. I am inclined to agree, as everything we ate tasted wonderful. We all started with a bread and cheese platter to go with our La Chataigne Rosé, then I got an INCREDIBLE goat cheese soufflé with apple-arugula (which they call Rocket, so weird) salad. For my entrée I got lamb with orange gnocchi shaped like little scallops, which was delightful. Carrie got the best Caesar salad of her life and fried soft-shell crab, and Marcella went for a huge yellowtail steak. All of this haute cuisine for a grand total of? 75 US dollars. Total. AMAZING.
Our final tasting was at Blauuwklippen, which also has a carriage museum and was apparently not expecting our arrival. This tasting was very informal, we just picked any five we wanted and drank them. They were okay, but I think the setting and more formal air of the other two wineries was more fun and made everything taste better. Oh, ambience.
After that, we headed home on a lovely and scenic drive through the mountains, just in time to hear DESMOND TUTU! He spoke about how “bread is a much better defense than bombs,” and how Bush sucks but has a great stance on Myanmar, and was generally impish and adorably grandpa-esque. He was just very accessible, had an infectious laugh, and would sometimes hop or skip around and get really excited about the things he was talking about. It was really a gift to be able to see him.
The last day was spent trying to watch Grey’s on YouTube in an internet café (I know. I’m obsessed. It’s bad. Whatever.), grocery shopping, and spending my last Rand on a few nice souvenirs and gifts. When we boarded the ship for good, we got a great surprise from a township choir! They sang traditional African songs, the South African national anthem, and were really good and fun to listen to. It really made me miss being part of a choir and a singing group (hearts, In Achord!).
All in all it was a delightful time. I think I remembered everything, better than I thought I would. We’re on our way to India now for 12 long days of class and work. Hopefully we’ll actually get there, what with all the terrorist bombings and human stampeding happening. We get a one day break amidst all the class for the Sea Olympics, wherein I have once again been roped into being our Sea’s (hall’s) representative to the Olympic Spelling Bee. I can’t escape it. I can’t believe it is October already, and by the time we get Chennai it will be the Ides of October. Our time in Asia is fast and furious, with no more than three days in between each port. Woo!
Wow. I wrote this post in several installments, and it is very, very long. Well done you for reading it all!
I really enjoyed my time in Africa. While Cape Town felt very European and safe because you could do whatever you wanted and never have to leave the port area, it was easy to become complacent and miss out on a real African experience. We pretty much stuck to the touristy stuff, but it was a good time nonetheless. I think when you are young and female and white, your ability to really go out among the people is limited because of safety issues.
That said, the fact that apartheid only ended 14 years ago speaks to enormous progress on South Africa’s part. I think the rest of the world helped it, as the US’ big civil rights struggle came decades before (and even before that, Civil War-wise), and Europe is far ahead of the US (and therefore everywhere else) in terms of race relations. Our guide on the wine tour (more on that later) gave us a really honest and detailed explanation of his opinions of race in South Africa, which was refreshing because often people that have been on the causal end of civil struggle (he was white) have the tendency to gloss over their part in it with the “cog in the machine” defense. He clearly still had some bias about native Africans, but he seemed genuinely concerned and a little embarrassed about that bias, and it was nice that he shared that with us, as no one wants to admit they’re a racist.
It was really nice to just stay in one place for a week. We were still clearly tourists, but we had a little more time to learn the port and plan things out and generally get our bearings. It is amazing to be able to go to all these countries in just one semester, but only going for four or five days at a time really cuts down on your ability to interact with locals and learn the culture, simply because- like you would do your first week or two in any new locale- we need that time to do the tourist stuff. Even the tourist stuff is really cool, like touring the wine country and hiking table mountain, but it does take time. If we were in one place for the whole semester, we’d have time to get comfortable in our neighborhood, meet some local friends, etc. but being as migrant as we are we’ve really only got time for the essentials.
Now I will try and go through my adventures as chronologically as possible. Sorry in advance if the rest of this makes you feel like I’m talking to you like you’re dumb, I just finished the kids’ blog about Namibia so I’m still in “hey there little pirates!” mode.
Okay, first day: We got off the ship after relatively little hassle. Carrie and Marcella both had FDPs (the field practica, teacher-led educational business), so I went to lunch and the aquarium with my friend Jenny. The aquarium was pretty cool. We got there just in time to see them feed the penguins, which were SO CUTE. Right after that, they announced they were feeding the turtle and the rays in the “predator tank”, so of course we went to see that. It was pretty awesome.
They trained this 20-year-old turtle to bonk a black and white disc thing with its head, and when it did, they fed it. Smart turtle. There were a few rays in the tank, but one ENORMOUS ray weighed over 450lbs. Seriously huge. When it went to get its food (from people scuba diving IN THE PREDATOR TANK WITH SHARKS, coolest job ever), it completely overtook the diver until you could no longer see her behind the huge ray. I guess a lot of the time the sharks decide they are hungry for the rays lunch, and although the sharks only eat once a week, and sometimes as little as every three weeks, they try to nibble on lunch that is not theirs. It is the second diver’s job to POKE THE SHARKS WITH A STICK to get them to go away. I don’t know about her, but I would be sure I had great insurance.
The aquarium was pretty small, but the predator tank was huge and round and had floor-to-ceiling warp-proof plastic, so it was really cool to see absolutely everything. There was also an amazing “kelp forest” with huge stands of brown kelp just swaying in the underwater-fan-induced breeze, with huge fish and a big school of tiny fish just floating about. I took some great pictures that I’m sure I will force you to sit down and look at for hours on end when I get home.
That night, we hit up Mitchell’s Pub, which yes I know, is a Scottish pub in South Africa, not very indigenous of me, but it was close to the port and made a magical libation called “Old Wobbly”, which is a particularly apt description of their 22-proof beer. We went out to dinner at a nice restaurant in the enormous right-next-to-the-ship mall- I had a tasty but relatively unremarkable seafood platter. Only awesome thing is, the US has only the calamari rings and squid babies, but they have entire calamari STEAKS in SA. I had what looked like mozzarella sticks of calamari that was tender and delicious and not at all chewy as US calamari is sometimes found to be.
The next day was spent in general exploration of the Cape Towny harbor area, just walking around and popping into the odd store. We went back to the ship for lunch and decided to hit up a rugby game that (we thought) was happening at Newlands stadium very nearby. Nine of us (I knew Marcella obviously, and Steph and Emily, my friends from voyage book) took two cabs-yes, we were cramped- to Newlands, arriving there nice and early at 1:30 for the 3pm kickoff. NO ONE WAS THERE. Obviously something was amiss. What was amiss was that the game was not at Newlands anymore, but had been changed to some other stadium near Stellenbosch, a town about half an hour away. Well, the cab drivers said sure, we’ll take you there and then hang out while you watch the game, then take you back. It took us an hour and a half to get there. Our cab guy was driving SUPER slowly and had almost no gas left, plus he didn’t really know how to get there and was following the other cab dude. We finally got there, watched the rugby game- which was SO BADASS, rugby is hardcore- and then headed back to the taxis. The ride back took only 45 minutes, including a stop for gas and a scenic drive through the winelands. It was an amusing misadventure. Rugby is awesome and crazy and violently entertaining.
Sunday during the day was spent climbing Table Mountain, which was awesome. We took a cab to the bottom and started a two-hour hike past gorgeous waterfalls, seriously steep rock stairs, and a few “scenic vista” stops for Carrie to use her inhaler, as the air started thinning and having our friend fall off Table Mountain due to asthma would really put a damper on our Sunday. It was actually pretty tough going, as it was mostly straight up, with slight terracing and a few giant rocks to step on. The view from the top was PHENOMENAL. We saw Cape Town on one side and cliffs and the gorgeous blue ocean on the other. We took the cable car down, which rotated as it went down the mountain for optimum 360-degree gorgeousness.
Sunday night they had 50% off cocktails and sushi at this gorgeous and amazing restaurant, Sevruga. Their rainbow rolls were the best I have ever had, and they had these things called salmon roses, with a little salmon rolled with a bit of rice on top, plus some aioli and roe…so tasty. I missed sushi, and while I wanted to hold back and wait until Japan so I could taste the real deal, this was too good to pass up. Nikki, you will be proud of me- I even tried salmon and tuna sashimi, and loved it! Not loved the tuna, but it was okay, and I really loved the salmon. I also had a fantastic blood orange mojito that I am going to try my best to recreate for you upon my return. Later we went to this restaurant called Quay 4 and partook of a 3.5 liter beer (don’t worry, it was a large group)…it was awesome.
On Monday me, Carrie, Marcella and our friend Sam did Operation Hunger, which was absolutely incredible. It was not so incredible that my camera died ten minutes in, but it worked out fine. Operation Hunger’s mission is to weigh and assess the nutrition of kidlets in the townships, along with distributing food to community kitchens in the area. We spent the morning weighing about 30-some kids at a “crèche” (French actually, for nursery/day care) in the township called Los Angeles. Yes, that’s right. “LA” is just outside the big Cape Town township of Khayelitsha. We spent most of our time playing with the kids. Someone very smart brought balloons, which were a HUGE hit. The kids also really liked seeing their pictures in everyone’s digital cameras. It was so funny to see their faces light up when they recognized themselves, especially because when you took a picture of them they would either not smile or do the no-teeth not-really-smiling smile, and then bust out laughing when you showed them. We did the same thing at another, smaller crèche in Green Park, then stopped for lunch. We had box lunches, but we decided to donate them to the Green Park community food center and buy our lunches at the rest stop instead. I wish I could say this was 100% due to our altruism, but it was at least in part due to the fact that the sandwiches looked less than appetizing. Not bad like rotten, but our pampered American taste buds craved Wimpy burgers.
No matter the means, our donations had a very good end, as the kitchen workers were out and so the kids would’ve been stuck with no food. Thanks to our lunches, we were able to feed all of the kids at least a little something- a piece of sandwich, some biscuits, hunks of apple. The program director told us that most of the time, whatever the kids can scrounge up at the food center is their food for the day, and that if we hadn’t brought our lunches, the kids may not have eaten. It felt really good to be able to feed the kids, play with them, and hear them sing, it was fun to interact with them and I think they had fun hanging with us, too. Another bonus- the Green Park community has made huge strides in the last two years, as at that time, Operation Hunger found over 90% of the crèche’s children to be malnourished and this year, there were none.
Tuesday I went to Robben Island. After a very bumpy ferry ride that I almost threw up on, I got to walk through Robben Island prison and see the cell in which Nelson Mandela stayed for 13 years. In Apartheid days, the prison separated the political prisoners into followers in dorm-style cells and leaders in single cells. Mandela was in a small single cell of his own, as he was deemed someone the other political prisoners may rally around and get organized.
The most moving part of the trip for me was actually not Mandela’s cell, but the private prison complex of Robert Sobukwe. Very few people, even Black South Africans know Sobukwe’s name, despite the fact that he was Apartheid government’s Public Enemy #1. He was a proponent of non-violent protest, and when all Black and Coloured South Africans had to carry passbooks stating where they could and could not go, he arranged for a symbolic burning of all the passbooks in a single day. Unfortunately, what was meant to be a peaceful rally became the Sharpeville massacre. Police eventually opened fire on the protestors, continuing to shoot even as they ran away. Sobukwe was arrested and kept in one prison or another until his death from cancer at age 46. During his time on Robben Island, he was kept in isolation and silence, guarded by two wardens every second of every day. He died four years before the end of Apartheid, and was never able to see that he had anything but a tragic impact on Black civil rights in South Africa. I honestly got a little teary as the tour guide was telling the story, because I’ve certainly never heard of Robert Sobukwe, but now that I have, I am not likely to forget him. After that very upsetting tale, we saw a flock of really cute penguins congregating on the side of the road! Then we left.
Wednesday meant an AMAZING wine tour in Paarl (means Pearl, named so because of the smoothish rocks in the vicinity), Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. This was honestly the highlight of South Africa for me. The views of the gorgeous mountains with vineyards in front, the adorable village of Franschhoek and eating lunch in the best restaurant in Africa (seriously. Thanks, Wikipedia!) made it a super day. It was also a super day because of all the wine. We started off at KWV, which actually buys and distributes wine from a bunch of different Paarl-area vineyards, but also makes amazing brandies and a little wine of its own. Here, we learned how to pair food and wine by tasting foods that fit into broad categories like bitter (arugula), acidic (lemon), savoury (Marmite, which tastes like a thick soy sauce, on a cracker), salty (blue cheese, which I still do not enjoy) and sweet (shortbread, yum!), and then tasting the different wines to see how their flavor changed according to the foods. It was very informative, I learned a lot, and it was a good way to start off because it got us all thinking about how to taste well. Our tour guide was cool (above mentioned Afrikaner)- it was just me, Carrie, Marcella and an older Irish man named Phillip, who was not very talkative but improved in that respect as the tastings continued.
We went to LaMotte next, which makes the most delicious Sauvignon Blanc- I honestly tasted zingy green apples, a flavor I picked out thanks to our handy “this is what this should taste like” sheets. I definitely want to try and find it somewhere in the US.
We stopped for lunch in Franschhoek at Le Quartier Francais, which according to Food & Wine is the 50th best restaurant IN THE WORLD. I am inclined to agree, as everything we ate tasted wonderful. We all started with a bread and cheese platter to go with our La Chataigne Rosé, then I got an INCREDIBLE goat cheese soufflé with apple-arugula (which they call Rocket, so weird) salad. For my entrée I got lamb with orange gnocchi shaped like little scallops, which was delightful. Carrie got the best Caesar salad of her life and fried soft-shell crab, and Marcella went for a huge yellowtail steak. All of this haute cuisine for a grand total of? 75 US dollars. Total. AMAZING.
Our final tasting was at Blauuwklippen, which also has a carriage museum and was apparently not expecting our arrival. This tasting was very informal, we just picked any five we wanted and drank them. They were okay, but I think the setting and more formal air of the other two wineries was more fun and made everything taste better. Oh, ambience.
After that, we headed home on a lovely and scenic drive through the mountains, just in time to hear DESMOND TUTU! He spoke about how “bread is a much better defense than bombs,” and how Bush sucks but has a great stance on Myanmar, and was generally impish and adorably grandpa-esque. He was just very accessible, had an infectious laugh, and would sometimes hop or skip around and get really excited about the things he was talking about. It was really a gift to be able to see him.
The last day was spent trying to watch Grey’s on YouTube in an internet café (I know. I’m obsessed. It’s bad. Whatever.), grocery shopping, and spending my last Rand on a few nice souvenirs and gifts. When we boarded the ship for good, we got a great surprise from a township choir! They sang traditional African songs, the South African national anthem, and were really good and fun to listen to. It really made me miss being part of a choir and a singing group (hearts, In Achord!).
All in all it was a delightful time. I think I remembered everything, better than I thought I would. We’re on our way to India now for 12 long days of class and work. Hopefully we’ll actually get there, what with all the terrorist bombings and human stampeding happening. We get a one day break amidst all the class for the Sea Olympics, wherein I have once again been roped into being our Sea’s (hall’s) representative to the Olympic Spelling Bee. I can’t escape it. I can’t believe it is October already, and by the time we get Chennai it will be the Ides of October. Our time in Asia is fast and furious, with no more than three days in between each port. Woo!
Wow. I wrote this post in several installments, and it is very, very long. Well done you for reading it all!
25 September 2008
Lesson Eight: How To Fall in Love With an Entire Country in Four Days
I (insert hyperbolic word for “very” here) LOVE NAMIBIA. I honestly would go back in a heartbeat. It is a beautiful country with really fun outdoor activities, like safaris, ATV-ing and patio breweries! Seriously. The people were all really friendly and eager to talk about their country and their experiences. While I was in full badass mode, riding my ATV down a giant sand dune in the Namib desert, the Atlantic to my left and endless sand to my right, I realized and subsequently screamed into my helmet- “This is my semester of college!” I have never loved college this much. Now on to the specifics about Namibia. I am going to paraphrase from my journal entries because otherwise I will forget things. This is gonna be a long one, children.
At the diplomatic briefing before debarkation in Walvis Bay, the attaché guy told us a sweet and gentle story about how someone broke into his b&b the night before and stabbed him in the arm with a screwdriver, obviously scaring us shitless. After Brasil, we were not in the mood for another country where you walked around fearing for your safety. He made it sound like that was an everyday occurrence. It is not. I guess the hyperbole was a good way to make sure our guard was up. We were also happy to be in a country where the national language is English, especially since after South Africa, English will be nowhere near the languages we’ll be hearing. We debarked at about 12, and started heading towards the bus stop for our 1pm bus to Windhoek. There were about 15 of us going on the safari, and we all made it to the bus stop on time and on the list. We got on the nice, chartery, comfy Intercape bus and started our magical journey!
As we drove out of Walvis Bay toward Swakopmund and then Windhoek (about four hours away), I got stunning views of the ocean right next to the massive Namib desert, a gorgeous juxtaposition of blue water and golden sand. After a few “refreshment stops”, which involved Namibia’s answer to Cheetos, Nik Naks-the mascot of which was, you guessed it, Nik Nak, who looked strangely like Lil Jon. Snap ya fangas.
Once we arrived in Windhoek, we got a free shuttle ride to our nightly accommodations, the Cardboard Box Backpacker’s Lodge, known simply as “The Box”. The rooms were named after Vegas Casinos (I stayed in the Luxor), and they were very simple, but clean and roomy. We had just enough time to throw our stuff down and check out the hostel bar- very cozy and open air, right next to the pool- before we got cabs to Joe’s Beerhouse, which was absolutely MAGICAL. I ate about 75% of what I was about to see on safari: Ostrich, oryx, crocodile, kudu, springbok, and zebra, along with delicious corn fritters and some kind of delightful white cheese dipping sauce. The decided favorite was the zebra steak, with the oryx and ostrich coming in close behind. Our entire dinner, including drinks, entrees and dessert, came to N92 each. Sounds painful, right? That’s just over $12. Like I said; magical. The place was safari-esque, with big ponds, gravel walkways and thatch roofs with long communal tables and barstools made from toilet seats. After dinner we headed back to The Box Bar for drinks and international socialization- there were people from Australia, Germany, Chicago and Boston. Even after only one night, the cheap food, nice people and lack of hassling from anyone made Namibia outstrip Brazil by a long shot.
The next morning we woke up bright and early for free pancakes- really they were cinnamon sugar crepes, hence the “pancrepe”-and tea. After breakfast, we were picked up by our safari company in the van that was essentially our home for three days. We drove to Etosha and set up camp in our nice little two-person tents, then watched our first incredible African sunset at the camp watering hole, where we saw both Jupiter and a family of rhinos.
After a simple dinner that still beat out ship food, we played some cards and went to bed. We woke up around six the next day and spent the day on various game drives throughout the park, ending at our next campsite, which had a pool and an outdoor bar cum bonfire, along with a cool enclosed atrium restaurant-bar-watering hole area. Game drives are super cool. We spent the morning searching for lions, because once it gets hot they go hide under cool shady trees. We didn’t see any until the last afternoon, when we found three lounging under trees rather far away, but my sexy digital zoom caught them pretty fantastically. We saw a plethora of zebras- there are mule zebras and horse zebras that hang out together- and a plethora and a half of springbok, which are super adorable (and delicious) little gazelles. We also saw gemsbok gazelles, called oryx, a herd of elephants, warthogs, mongeese (okay, mongoose, whatever pluralization), a meerkat, wildebeests, impala, a tiny antelope called a dik-dik (insert joke here), ostriches and giraffes! Giraffes are the cutest animals ever. They look super awkward when the bend down to drink at the watering hole, they have to splay their front legs out and bend their long necks down to reach the water.
We also visited the Etosha Pan, which is just a gigantic expanse of crusty salty deserty earth that extends in all directions. We used the amazing scene to take a huge group jump shot- there’s a pretty fab picture of me doing a leap in mid-air. There’s also an amazing picture of what looks like Kate holding me in her hand. Oh, perspective. You’ll see them eventually, I promise.
That night, we had an amazing dinner of lamb, squash with cinnamon and Tafel, Namibia’s beer of choice. After dinner me and my friend Katey hung out by the bonfire and made friends with Lazizi, the bartender, who taught us to say “I love you” (!Namserega) and “I love Namibia” (Dideke Namibia ba a!nam) in !Nara, his native language- the !’s are clicks, which are crazy to listen to. We took pictures with our guides, Elias and Jason- it was Elias’s birthday the next night, so we celebrated and wished him happy birthday in !Nara, but I don’t remember how to say that one. He told us how he was actually turning 43, but his ID and all his papers say 39 because when his parents divorced, they had to do all sorts of paperwork and his dad put down the wrong age, but that’s the one the government took- he had to do all sorts of extra paperwork to get it fixed.
Elias was hilarious- he definitely did not look 43, and he was really jovial and vivacious- every time he wanted to make an announcement to the group, he would say, “Ding dong, attention please!” which we all thought was the best thing ever, and said it on a regular basis. I used my airline stewardess voice to say “ding dong attention please”, and Elias liked it so much he made me use that voice to give an entire fake airline spiel to the whole bus the next morning, complete with putting tray tables in the full upright position and pointing out the exits. We have a really great picture of me, Kate, Elias and Lazizi hugging a tree because Kate’s shirt said “treehugger” and Elias thought it was funny. Elias would also make hilarious animal noises, including hyena, zebra (woopwoop), and leopard (reowrREOWR, we made this noise the entire way home), although we stumped him with giraffe because they really don’t make noise.
After our bonfire party, Kate and I went up on the roof of the safari bus to stargaze- the stars looked amazing; you can see Jupiter and Mars along with totally different constellations from home, as we’re in the Southern Hemisphere. That reminds me- if you were under the impression that crossing the equator makes the water in the toilet flush in the other direction, it is FALSE! The pull of gravity is not strong enough to affect the direction of the water, it always goes the same way, no matter where you are…I was a little disappointed to learn that upon our Equator crossing. But that’s old news.
The next morning, we woke up around 6:30, ate a quick breakfast, and got in the vans for 8am. We then proceeded to drive until 5pm, stopping only for snack breaks, lunch, and a wood carving slash craft market where I bought way too much stuff that I am going to keep a secret because most of it involves presents. At 5pm, we arrived in Windhoek (still four hours away from Walvis Bay, mind you- somuchdriving) and left our safari guides at the tour place. We went back to Joe’s Beerhouse, which was just as magical as the first time (oryx and zebra and springbok, oh my!). We had a big group, and we got the “meter of beer”, which is just 12 beers in a giant wooden trough- hilarious. After another delightful dinner, we got back into yet another van (with yet another 6-song CD on repeat, just like the Amazon) to drive back to Walvis Bay, getting back around 1am. It was such a fabulous three days, but it felt really fabulous to take a looooong shower and get into my shipboard bed.
Our final (and only) day in Walvis Bay, a few of us from the safari took a cab into Swakopmund, a completely adorable Germanic town about 15 minutes outside WB. We decided to go ATV-ing, which was the GREATEST DECISION EVER. It was so much fun! We went with Desert Xplorers, which was a great choice because you know who else did? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and their kidlets! There was a picture of the famous fam playing, and the bikes they used are named after them. We rode our sweet ATVs around the desert for an hour and a half, flooring it (well, thumbing it, there was no foot pedal) up and down the dunes like a self-driven roller coaster. Our ATV guide, Erwen, very generously too us back into Swakopmund proper in his Desert Xplorer van for lunch at an awesome German brewery, the Swakopmund Brauhaus. I had a delightful pork snitzel with bread dumplings, complemented by their signature beer. After lunch, we haggled our way into a cab back to the ship, to embark and head for South Africa.
We reach SA tomorrow, and are there for six full days. This is the first port where I don’t have any big trips planned, and I’m excited to explore all that Cape Town has to offer. I’m definitely going to Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela was kept, the Stellenbosch Winelands, and out to a township for Operation Hunger, where I’m going to weigh and assess the nutrition of (read: play with) little South African kidlets. Cape Town is a major world tourist destination, so I can’t wait to discover it! Thanks to all of you who have sent me emails thus far, they really make my days, and to those of you who haven’t? Email me! I would love to hear from you! I’ll have another (probably even longer) post in about a week when we leave SA for our 12-day journey to India.
At the diplomatic briefing before debarkation in Walvis Bay, the attaché guy told us a sweet and gentle story about how someone broke into his b&b the night before and stabbed him in the arm with a screwdriver, obviously scaring us shitless. After Brasil, we were not in the mood for another country where you walked around fearing for your safety. He made it sound like that was an everyday occurrence. It is not. I guess the hyperbole was a good way to make sure our guard was up. We were also happy to be in a country where the national language is English, especially since after South Africa, English will be nowhere near the languages we’ll be hearing. We debarked at about 12, and started heading towards the bus stop for our 1pm bus to Windhoek. There were about 15 of us going on the safari, and we all made it to the bus stop on time and on the list. We got on the nice, chartery, comfy Intercape bus and started our magical journey!
As we drove out of Walvis Bay toward Swakopmund and then Windhoek (about four hours away), I got stunning views of the ocean right next to the massive Namib desert, a gorgeous juxtaposition of blue water and golden sand. After a few “refreshment stops”, which involved Namibia’s answer to Cheetos, Nik Naks-the mascot of which was, you guessed it, Nik Nak, who looked strangely like Lil Jon. Snap ya fangas.
Once we arrived in Windhoek, we got a free shuttle ride to our nightly accommodations, the Cardboard Box Backpacker’s Lodge, known simply as “The Box”. The rooms were named after Vegas Casinos (I stayed in the Luxor), and they were very simple, but clean and roomy. We had just enough time to throw our stuff down and check out the hostel bar- very cozy and open air, right next to the pool- before we got cabs to Joe’s Beerhouse, which was absolutely MAGICAL. I ate about 75% of what I was about to see on safari: Ostrich, oryx, crocodile, kudu, springbok, and zebra, along with delicious corn fritters and some kind of delightful white cheese dipping sauce. The decided favorite was the zebra steak, with the oryx and ostrich coming in close behind. Our entire dinner, including drinks, entrees and dessert, came to N92 each. Sounds painful, right? That’s just over $12. Like I said; magical. The place was safari-esque, with big ponds, gravel walkways and thatch roofs with long communal tables and barstools made from toilet seats. After dinner we headed back to The Box Bar for drinks and international socialization- there were people from Australia, Germany, Chicago and Boston. Even after only one night, the cheap food, nice people and lack of hassling from anyone made Namibia outstrip Brazil by a long shot.
The next morning we woke up bright and early for free pancakes- really they were cinnamon sugar crepes, hence the “pancrepe”-and tea. After breakfast, we were picked up by our safari company in the van that was essentially our home for three days. We drove to Etosha and set up camp in our nice little two-person tents, then watched our first incredible African sunset at the camp watering hole, where we saw both Jupiter and a family of rhinos.
After a simple dinner that still beat out ship food, we played some cards and went to bed. We woke up around six the next day and spent the day on various game drives throughout the park, ending at our next campsite, which had a pool and an outdoor bar cum bonfire, along with a cool enclosed atrium restaurant-bar-watering hole area. Game drives are super cool. We spent the morning searching for lions, because once it gets hot they go hide under cool shady trees. We didn’t see any until the last afternoon, when we found three lounging under trees rather far away, but my sexy digital zoom caught them pretty fantastically. We saw a plethora of zebras- there are mule zebras and horse zebras that hang out together- and a plethora and a half of springbok, which are super adorable (and delicious) little gazelles. We also saw gemsbok gazelles, called oryx, a herd of elephants, warthogs, mongeese (okay, mongoose, whatever pluralization), a meerkat, wildebeests, impala, a tiny antelope called a dik-dik (insert joke here), ostriches and giraffes! Giraffes are the cutest animals ever. They look super awkward when the bend down to drink at the watering hole, they have to splay their front legs out and bend their long necks down to reach the water.
We also visited the Etosha Pan, which is just a gigantic expanse of crusty salty deserty earth that extends in all directions. We used the amazing scene to take a huge group jump shot- there’s a pretty fab picture of me doing a leap in mid-air. There’s also an amazing picture of what looks like Kate holding me in her hand. Oh, perspective. You’ll see them eventually, I promise.
That night, we had an amazing dinner of lamb, squash with cinnamon and Tafel, Namibia’s beer of choice. After dinner me and my friend Katey hung out by the bonfire and made friends with Lazizi, the bartender, who taught us to say “I love you” (!Namserega) and “I love Namibia” (Dideke Namibia ba a!nam) in !Nara, his native language- the !’s are clicks, which are crazy to listen to. We took pictures with our guides, Elias and Jason- it was Elias’s birthday the next night, so we celebrated and wished him happy birthday in !Nara, but I don’t remember how to say that one. He told us how he was actually turning 43, but his ID and all his papers say 39 because when his parents divorced, they had to do all sorts of paperwork and his dad put down the wrong age, but that’s the one the government took- he had to do all sorts of extra paperwork to get it fixed.
Elias was hilarious- he definitely did not look 43, and he was really jovial and vivacious- every time he wanted to make an announcement to the group, he would say, “Ding dong, attention please!” which we all thought was the best thing ever, and said it on a regular basis. I used my airline stewardess voice to say “ding dong attention please”, and Elias liked it so much he made me use that voice to give an entire fake airline spiel to the whole bus the next morning, complete with putting tray tables in the full upright position and pointing out the exits. We have a really great picture of me, Kate, Elias and Lazizi hugging a tree because Kate’s shirt said “treehugger” and Elias thought it was funny. Elias would also make hilarious animal noises, including hyena, zebra (woopwoop), and leopard (reowrREOWR, we made this noise the entire way home), although we stumped him with giraffe because they really don’t make noise.
After our bonfire party, Kate and I went up on the roof of the safari bus to stargaze- the stars looked amazing; you can see Jupiter and Mars along with totally different constellations from home, as we’re in the Southern Hemisphere. That reminds me- if you were under the impression that crossing the equator makes the water in the toilet flush in the other direction, it is FALSE! The pull of gravity is not strong enough to affect the direction of the water, it always goes the same way, no matter where you are…I was a little disappointed to learn that upon our Equator crossing. But that’s old news.
The next morning, we woke up around 6:30, ate a quick breakfast, and got in the vans for 8am. We then proceeded to drive until 5pm, stopping only for snack breaks, lunch, and a wood carving slash craft market where I bought way too much stuff that I am going to keep a secret because most of it involves presents. At 5pm, we arrived in Windhoek (still four hours away from Walvis Bay, mind you- somuchdriving) and left our safari guides at the tour place. We went back to Joe’s Beerhouse, which was just as magical as the first time (oryx and zebra and springbok, oh my!). We had a big group, and we got the “meter of beer”, which is just 12 beers in a giant wooden trough- hilarious. After another delightful dinner, we got back into yet another van (with yet another 6-song CD on repeat, just like the Amazon) to drive back to Walvis Bay, getting back around 1am. It was such a fabulous three days, but it felt really fabulous to take a looooong shower and get into my shipboard bed.
Our final (and only) day in Walvis Bay, a few of us from the safari took a cab into Swakopmund, a completely adorable Germanic town about 15 minutes outside WB. We decided to go ATV-ing, which was the GREATEST DECISION EVER. It was so much fun! We went with Desert Xplorers, which was a great choice because you know who else did? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and their kidlets! There was a picture of the famous fam playing, and the bikes they used are named after them. We rode our sweet ATVs around the desert for an hour and a half, flooring it (well, thumbing it, there was no foot pedal) up and down the dunes like a self-driven roller coaster. Our ATV guide, Erwen, very generously too us back into Swakopmund proper in his Desert Xplorer van for lunch at an awesome German brewery, the Swakopmund Brauhaus. I had a delightful pork snitzel with bread dumplings, complemented by their signature beer. After lunch, we haggled our way into a cab back to the ship, to embark and head for South Africa.
We reach SA tomorrow, and are there for six full days. This is the first port where I don’t have any big trips planned, and I’m excited to explore all that Cape Town has to offer. I’m definitely going to Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela was kept, the Stellenbosch Winelands, and out to a township for Operation Hunger, where I’m going to weigh and assess the nutrition of (read: play with) little South African kidlets. Cape Town is a major world tourist destination, so I can’t wait to discover it! Thanks to all of you who have sent me emails thus far, they really make my days, and to those of you who haven’t? Email me! I would love to hear from you! I’ll have another (probably even longer) post in about a week when we leave SA for our 12-day journey to India.
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