The Road Not Taken

 

"A dragonfly flitted in front of me and stopped on a fence. I stood up, took my cap in my hands, and was about to catch the dragonfly when…"

 

Day 1:

Hiroshima is now a city of peace. It's a little less than 2 hours by bullet train from Kobe, where the ship was docked. My friend Julie and I made the trip on the first day in port in Japan. Thankfully she had done her research, because I would have had absolutely no idea which train to take, much less how to even get to the bullet train station in the first place. The Japanese rail system is incredible. You can get almost everywhere in the country by public transportation. And at fast speeds too.

 

We arrived in Hiroshima around 2 or 3, just when restaurants were closing up after lunch. This was a problem, because we were both so hungry. We trekked out aimlessly from the station trying to locate a restaurant that was open. We traveled down alleyways and sidestreets looking. On one of the remote side streets we found a marble block sticking out from the sidewalk. Walking closer we saw that there was a plaque on the face of the marble with what looked like paper streamers hung from it. It was literally in a lifeless street, so we thought it was quite strange and out of place. We came to face to face with the strange block, and read the inscription on it's face:

 

"Hypocenter…the first atomic bomb used in the history of human kind exploded approximately 580 meters above this spot."

 

After finishing, both Julie and I just slowly turned our heads to look 580 meters above in the sky where it happened. Hello Hiroshima.

 

An atomic bomb was dropped on the city at 8:15AM August 6^th, 1945, initially killing about 80,000. Radiation lingered on, and is still attributed for many deaths. Outside the museum there is a stone chest that has a list of names of all of the departed inside. Every year the chest is opened and names are added to the list. There is a pond bordering the chest, and on the other side is the flame of peace, a continuously burning fire that will not be extinguished until there are no more atomic bombs in the world. But the aim of all the monuments and the surrounding area is to educate on the horrors of war, not to hold those accountable who dropped the bomb in the first place. The city of Hiroshima is past the blame and shame, and now they long for harmony. At the atomic bomb museum there is very little mention of World War 2, it is clear they're not faulting anyone here. I remember in Viet Nam at the War Remnants Museum there was a whole different tone; that place wanted everyone to know that America painted its walls with Vietnamese blood. But not in Hiroshima. Sure, there was blood on the walls there too, but there was no fingers pointed. It was almost startling. The closest thing I could find to accountability was one plaque that said that Little Boy was dropped by the Enola Gay. Not the United States. Obviously the Enola Gay was a US war plane, but that's beside the point. War and peace are universal, with no one to blame for either except all of us.

 

Day 2:

There was a big journey planned out for Japan. Todd, Dan, and I were heading out on the second day in port for our excursion to Yokohama, where the ship was meeting back with us. Karina ended up tagging along too. We saw her in the terminal as we were leaving with packed bags, but without a place to go. So we invited her to come along, knowing that we were breaking our "only travel with guys" rule. It's a great rule. It has never lead us to frustration, and we have it for a good reason. But travelling with Karina ended up working really well.

 

From the port terminal we had to take a maze of connections on the Japanese transit system. Port Liner from the port terminal to the mono rail. Mono rail to the subway station. Subway to Shin-Kobe, the bullet train station. From there, an hour and a half bullet train ride to Nagoya, where we would be staying that night. We didn't leave the port in Kobe until about 7pm in the evening, so it was getting late by the time we arrived at Nagoya. I had booked a two person room in Nagoya for the four of us that night. Once we got off the bullet train in Nagoya, we had to take a different train to get to the section of the city where the hotel was. You get the point: all those transitions are very confusing. When we arrived at Nagoya, the train station we got off at was completely empty. The streets outside of it were empty too. We walked to the hotel from the train station without seeing a single other person.

 

It was about a 15 minute walk to our hotel, and when we got there Dan and Todd hid outside while Karina and I went inside to the front desk to get the room key. We went in to what we thought was the main lobby and were instructed to take our shoes off. Strange, but okay, it's Japan. The lobby was a nicely furnished two story open room with bright carpets and cozy furniture. We noticed that everyone in the place was walking around in matching robes. Even little children were scurrying across the floors in matching robes. Baby blue for boys and pink for girls. Stranger. I walked to the counter and showed the women working my reservation receipt with my confirmation information. She said a couple things in Japanese I didn't understand, pointed in a couple directions, and then upon seeing our very confused faces went in the back to retrieve someone who knew a little English. The interpreter came out and examined my paper before telling us that this place was not actually the hotel. The hotel was next door. This funky place with the matching robes and bare feet was the spa attached to hotel. And because we were hotel guests, the spa's services were free for us that night. Having traveled for hours with our big bags a free spa sounded like music to our ears. But we still needed to eat, so we eagerly asked what time the spa closed, hoping that it was at least late enough for us to eat and come back to enjoy it in time. "8 o'clock" we were told. Weird, we thought, it was already past 8 and the place was still fully operational by the looks of it. "8 AM," the interpreter clarified. Sweet.

 

Karina and I then crossed the parking lot to the real hotel lobby next door, pulling the same hiding routine with Todd and Dan. We checked in okay, gathered the troops, and were directed to a local Japanese spot for dinner, one of the only two that were still open at that time (the food was amazing). But what we were all really giddy about was to get back to the hotel and check out this spa. After all, from our brief glance in the front room, the place looked amazing. We came back to our room after dinner to find robes for the spa laying on the bed. They weren't the same matching robes I had seen in the spa before, but I think the different pattern was an indicator that we were guests from the hotel rather than members of the spa. Karina and I decided to check out the spa and report back to Dan and Todd on our findings. The spa was connected to the hotel via bridge walkway on the second floor. There was no one on the walkway except for us when we were crossing. A shoe rack and sign prompted us to remove our shoes and go on with bare feet. With a little apprehension, we continued down the walkway, and opened the door to the spa.

 

What we saw was amazing. Talk about culture shock, this was something completely unexpected. The first thing we saw were several Japanese men sprawled out across the floor, out cold in a deep slumber. No pillows or blankets, just robes, in the middle of the walk way, passed out. The lights weren't even dimmed, it would be as if you walked into a supermarket and saw people sleeping in the middle of the dairy aisle. It was that strange. We investigated further into the spa, and found that it's actually a pretty large 2 storey complex with a couple restaurants, massage parlors, salons, arcades, game rooms, and other things. But it wasn't like a mall. It was like play time for adults, with robes as pajamas. They gave you these little arm bands with barcodes on it and you could swipe the barcode at any restaurant, salon, or vending machine and it would automatically charge it to your room. They had vending machines that dispensed beer and hamburgers (with fries). They had entire rooms full of over a hundred personal massage chairs with attached plasmas TVs occupied by passed out Japanese men and women. They had ping pong and a comic book library (you check out a cubby, grab a comic book, and they'll bring you drinks). But the best part was the spa itself. There were dozens of different types of saunas and jacuzzis. One had yellow water that was like aroma therapy, one was literally a whirlpool that you just spun around in, and then there was a whole outdoor section. There were hot saunas, steam saunas, and even an ice sauna (exactly the opposite of a hot sauna). They all had flat screen TVs in them too. It was the most wild thing I had ever seen. And the Japanese there were all about it. Karina and I ran back to collect Todd and Dan to tell them of the wondrous things we had seen. We spent our entire night hanging out and using the facilities at this place. We were up until 4 AM doing everything we could. We didn't even get to it all either.

 

We woke up pretty early the next day, we had big things ahead of us. We took trains and buses to this small remote town called Magome. It is a rustic little place that hasn't been modernized yet and features all traditional Japanese architecture on every building. There is an old post route from Magome to another similarly out of the way town called Tsumago. The route is about 7k long and has small villages, bungalows, creeks, and waterfalls along the way. We came to Magome to hike this post route to Tsumago, and then take a bus to the next major train station and make it to Tokyo by the day's end. We had all of our large camping back packs with us, but conveniently there is a service where you can check your bags off and have them driven to Tsumago for a couple dollars. I was prepared to carry my bag the whole way because I didn't know this service was available until we got there, but because it was so handy we dropped our bags off to pick them up once we were done hiking. Both towns are in the forefront of breathtaking mountains. The spotty cloud cover made the mountains even more beautiful, and because it was fall all of the leaves on the foliage were dazzling red, orange and yellows. The sights were transfixing, we literally stopped for 20 minutes and gawked at some of the scenes as we passed through. The waterfall and creek dazzled, and I just could not get over how vibrant the path was with the fall colors. There were fruit trees along the way we ate from, and a mom teaching her cute son how to use wooden stilts at one of the bungalows. We savored the moment, took our time, and took it in. It wasn't the destination that we were heading for, it was the journey that was paramount.

 

We enjoyed ourselves so much that it was actually getting quite dark on the tail end of our hike. Karina and I lost the path a couple times and made our own. By the time we actually got to Tsumago it was completely dark out. Tsumago is tiny and quaint just like Magome, so the sun setting meant that lights were out, literally. Karina and I had gotten there around 6ish, we fell behind Todd and Dan about 2 hours into the hike. We slid our way into town, and not a single house or store had lights on inside. We found a map of the town posted on a board, and we hurried to the place where we were supposed to pick up our luggage, becoming worried that the luggage people may be gone, just like everyone else there. We got to the tourist building and Todd and Dan were sitting on the steps, the place was closed. But they had made it just in the nick of time, they caught the workers just after they closed and got them to open back up to get our bags. If they had been one minute later we would have been without our things or any idea what to do about that. So step 1 was retrieving our belongings, and we barely made that. Step 2 was finding our way to a train station. As expected, there were no more busses running at that hour. We found a pay phone and called a taxi. Taxis in Japan are just as expensive as they are in the US, so this was absolutely our last resort. The taxi took us to a train station. Step 2: accomplished. Step 3 was to take a train to Tokyo.

 

Something about Japan that no one really realizes until they're in the country is that there are virtually no ATMs that work with US and European debit cards. They have some other sort of banking system that isn't aggregated with our Citis, BofAs, and WaMus. There was one ATM in Kobe that I had grabbed some dough from, but it was nearly gone by the time I needed it to get to Tokyo. Especially after the taxi ride. The same was true for all of us. And we still had a very long trip ahead of us, from Tsumago to Tokyo is about 300 kilometers. And it was getting later by the hour. The closest train station to Tsumago that the taxi took us to was not a big train station, so we had to take the slow train all the way back to Nagoya in order to get on a bullet train to Tokyo. The problem was that we really didn't have all the much money left. So this is when we started free riding. There are two ways to do it. First way is to draft really close behind some random person as they go through the ticket machine so you can try to fit two people by using only fare. This is tricky, but it's not that bad when you get the hang of it. You look a little strange doing it, but if you have no money on you then sillyness doesn't factor into the equation. The second way to do it is more moral. You have a couple options when you buy your train tickets from the machines. You can buy a regular adult pass, or for half off, you can buy a child's pass. The thing is that there is no one checking what kind of ticket you have, so it's totally based on the honor system that you buy the pass designated for your age. We dabbled around Japan using a combination of these methods. We would draft until we felt to immoral about cheating the system so easily, and then buy a child pass for the next couple trains. I think I was able to travel all throughout the Japan for about $12.50. It may be wrong, but I'm not sure what else we were supposed to do. Plus it was fun. Big points. Anyways, because we had to backtrack back to Nagoya before we could get on the bullet train, our journey to Tokyo ended up taking about 3 hours, but exhaustion had us drifting in and out of dreams so we didn't really mind. We arrived at Tokyo around 12ish, took a subway a subway (child's ticket, you can't draft at night because there are no people to draft behind) to the hostel, and retired for the night.

 

(note: the rest of this entry isn't edited because I was racing against the clock to publish it before the cut off our internet, hopefully it makes sense)

 

The next day Karina decided she want to go off shopping on her own so the guys and I had a boys day out. We traveled around Tokyo, hitting up various spots around the city, taking the trains to destinations x, y, and z. Eventually we made it to a section of the city called Shibuya, which was like the downtown. Shibuya has the busiest intersection for foot traffic in the area. I'm sure you've seen it on TV or in the movies, it's that one junction where you just see hundreds and hundreds of Japanese people walking in every direction at once crossing the street. The best part about it is that it happens like clockwork- the light will be green to let the cars go through and then once the lights turn red in all direction the intersection just explodes with movement. Every time, all night and day long. I don't know where the people kept on coming from to make each cross as busy as the last, but sure enough, every time there would be hundreds of people crossing, no matter what. We played in the intersection for about an hour or so and then went to a conveyer belt sushi restaurant (where there are chefs in the middle of an island bar constantly making sushi and they put the dishes the make on a conveyer belt that runs by all the tables and when you see something you like you just grab it and eat) I'm not a huge sushi person, but it was some of the best sushi I've ever had. The fish was all so tasty, and that's a pretty big deal for me because I don't even like fish (unless it has a shell).

 

That night we had two options. The trains from Shibuya to our hostel stop running around midnight. We knew we were going to be out later than that so we resolved to either taking a taxi back to the hostel (about $40USD) or staying out all night until 5AM when the trains start running again. You know where this is going… We started the night thinking that we'd stay out until 1 or 2 and then fork over the cash for a taxi. We cruised around downtown, trying to find a good Karaoke bar or something. We found a lot of Karaoke spots, but they were all just private rooms and were pretty expensive. We didn't want to Karaoke with only the 3 of us, that isn't fun, so we didn't want to pay for a private room. We stopped by some small local pubs, and around 12ish we found some of our fellow SASers walking around aimlessly just like us. We invited them to go Karaoke with us, but again, all we could find were places offering private rooms. Even though our group was bigger by this time, we just wanted to sing and hang around with locals, even though this didn't seem possible.

 

We were about to give up when we went in to one last place. I had a plan in mind. While my whole group stopped at the front desk to talk to the person working about room rates, I walked right past to where all the private rooms were. Following music had never let me down before, so I decided to let the music guide me now. I heard beats coming from the stairwell so I walked towards it. The sound was flooding down the steps. I ascended to the third floor of the building, where the noise factory was. I walked down to the end of the hall and there was a door that was exploding with sound. There was something awesome going on in there. I crept the door open, still by myself at this point, and poked my head in. About 10 Japanese teenagers looked awkwardly my way, just a little more confused than I was. The music from the Karaoke machine beat on, but there was a silence by the blank stares. Then one of them motions me to come in. I give them the "wait just one moment" signal with my hand, and ran back down to the first floor where my friends were (we had about 10 people ourselves) I told them about what I had found, and took them up to the third floor, and to the room with the sound, and the Japanese teenagers cheered as we all entered. We all meshed well, all of our Japanese friends spoke English so we didn't have any trouble communicating. We spent the rest of the night singing both Japanese and American karaoke songs. The time flew by because we were having so much fun, we had that room packed with about 10 more people than it was meant for. Way better than having a private room with just the three of us. It was 5:30 AM before we knew it, and we all left the karaoke place. We took some pictures with our new friends and some other shenanigans went on before we parted ways. The subway was running again by that time, and we took it to our hostel, which was actually further away than I had previously thought. It was about a 30 minute subway ride. We stopped at the 24 hr McDonalds (gross gross gross) next to the subway station we got off at before returning to our hostel for a few hours sleep. This was probably one of, if not the best, night on Semester at Sea for me.

 

We were up by 11 for our check out the next morning. We didn't get that much sleep, but I wasn't that exhausted. It was our last day in Japan. Yokohama is where we ultimately had to be because that is where we had to meet back up with the ship (it had sailed from Kobe to Yokohama while we were traveling Japan). Yokohama is about a 30 minute train ride from Tokyo, so we weren't that rushed or anything like that. We arrived in Yokohama around mid day and spent the rest of the day browsing the city on foot. We stayed close to port, which was a really nice section of the city, reminded me a lot of Los Gatos or something with all the trees lining the sidewalks and such. It was a great easy going day. I watched the sun set at the port terminal before heading back on the ship for the long journey across the pacific.

 

In Japan I did everything I had wanted to do, and it is perhaps one of the only countries where I don't feel like I could have done it any better if I was able to have a second run through. Even getting lost and having no money for the trains was something I ended up enjoying in the end. Best of all, what I did was off the beaten path. I didn't just go to Tokyo and party for 3 nights straight. I spent my one night raging in Tokyo, but each of my other nights were spent in other places, seeing things that everyone stuck in Tokyo didn't get to see. And that's what I realized makes this trip into a journey- breaking from the masses and getting away from structure. Not knowing what's going to happen next is the greatest thing about travelling around the world. It's a big complicated place, so you'd be constraining yourself by trying to always stay in control.

 

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

• Robert Frost
  

 

 

 

Spenser

Always Move Fast

A Semester at Sea student went out the first night in Hong Kong but didn't come back, ever.

I was in Beijing when the call came, on a SAS orchestrated trip. It was about 3:00 AM. I was rooming with Neil, a SAS staff member, because our last names started with the same letter of the alphabet. We were fast asleep.

We had left for Beijing earlier that day. About a 3 hour flight from Hong Kong, and then a bus ride to Tsingua University, where we were staying. One girl on our trip lost her passport at the airport, so there was a small delay from that, but we were moving along well. The hotel was a sort of tucked away place on the outskirts of campus, the type of place that taxi drivers will shrug out of confusion if you ask to go there because no one has ever heard of it. We ate dinner at the hotel, and by the time we were settling into our rooms it was dark out. My friends and I went out exploring, trying to find a grocery store to get the necessary items to make the night a good one. We find it after being lost for about an hour, and start collecting the things we need. Our goal was to make that university a college for the night, but apparently red SOLO cups aren't that popular in China. I was playing charades trying to explain to the clerks what I wanted before I started drawing pictures of disposable cups. They directed me to an aisle of non disposable cups, but they were so cheap we bought about 20 of them anyway. Ping pong is the national sport in China so balls were a lot easier to find, as was the rest of our supplies.

The walk to the grocery store and then running around shopping for supplies took a lot of energy out of us. The fun started when we tried hailing a taxi to take us back to the hotel so we didn't have to walk back. We stopped 3 taxis who had no idea the place we needed to get to even existed, much less how to get to it. None of the taxi drivers in China actually speak English, so we had the Chinese characters for our hotel written down on a piece of paper that we were showing to the drivers. A fourth driver we showed the paper to looked at it once, and then turned the sheet upside down and examined the characters from the wrong way with a confused face before telling us to get in. That's how we knew it was going to be a good ride. The taxi driver took us all through campus searching for this place. Giving up on the roads, the driver kicked the car up on the side walk and we start heading down some pedestrian paths. We crossed a pedestrian foot bridge and then get to a point on the walkway where huge cement blocks were laying on the blacktop to prevent anything larger than a bike (you know, like a taxi) from going down the path. But no mere creation of man could stop us; our rambunctious driver slid it into park, got out, and started pushing the very large block out of the way. Inside the taxi we were all laughing hysterically at what we were witnessing, and after a minute of no progress with the pushing, I got out and started to help our driver. The block screeched across the blacktop and probably made some irremovable scratch marks on both the ground and the block before we moved it about 5 inches out of the way, a suitable distance for our driver. We got back in the car and squeezed through the little gap we had created. I still have no idea how we managed not to scratch the sides of a car, it was incredibly tight between the cement block on one side and a tree on the other. But we eventually made it back to the hotel, and the group of us had our festivities in Cory's room until about 2AM, after which we all headed back to our own rooms. I tip toed around my room once I got back so I wouldn't wake Neil, who was already sleeping. I hit the pillow like a rock and was in dreamland in no time. And then the phone in our room rang.

Neil woke up to answer it.

"I'm calling you because I knew you'd be up this late," said Cindy, the Dean of Students on the other side. But I didn't know that until the next night when Neil talked about it. I actually had no idea what was going on at the time of the call, I was quite disoriented, and I was sure that the call happened at 6AM instead of 3AM, and was probably about the girl who lost her passport or something. But it was at 3 and was about something else. I fell back asleep without thinking twice.

I woke up the next morning normally, too late for breakfast, and started to get ready for the day. Neil was already out, probably at breakfast. I met up at my bus at 8AM; we were going to the Great Wall that day. We had a group of about 70 students, so there were two buses. Each bus had a SAS bus leader. John, a psychology teacher on the ship, was the leader of my bus, and Neil was the leader to the other bus. That morning Neil boarded my bus, but since I had been rooming with him and was seeing him so much I didn't stop to realize that he shouldn't have been on our bus because he wasn't our bus leader. He stood at the front of the bus, full of 35 students or so, and looked down the aisle.

"I'm sorry, but we have a pretty full itinerary today, so we won't be able to postpone our schedule or anything," he choked out. No one knew what he was talking about. "Here is an e-mail from the Executive Dean, Jack Van de Water." And then he read it:

"Dear Shipboard Community, I am very sorry to inform you that one of our students, Kurt Leswing, was struck by a vehicle early Friday morning in Hong Kong, was fatally injured and died immediately."

He kept on talking but I stopped hearing the words coming out. Before coming on this trip I had heard of students dying on Semester at Sea. When we went to India we were warned about the traffic, which had taken another student some years ago. Again in Viet Nam for the same reason. But I never imagined that something like that would happen on our voyage. During the pre port to Hong Kong, I remember the topic of traffic being brought up. "After surviving Viet Nam traffic, I don't think you have much to worry about," was what the on board physicians said during their presentation.

Neil finished reading with tears in his eyes. "Okay, I'm gonna go tell the other bus," he said before exiting. Everyone on my bus glanced through the windows to the students on the other bus, who had no idea what they were about to be told. It was hard to watch knowing what was going to happen. Everyone on my bus was still quiet, afraid to talk. It was still quite early, and frigidly cold. I gazed aimlessly out the window, not quite knowing to think or feel. The engines started up, the heat was turned on, and we drove off for the Great Wall.

The landscape on the ride to the Great Wall was surreal, but it was hard to tell if we were thinking or even seeing straight at that time. We got off the bus and the temperature couldn't have been much higher than freezing. I was a little unprepared for such coldness so the first thing I did was head to the gift shop in pursuit of warm things. 50 Yuan for a pair of gloves and a fuzzy communist hat. I was then prepared to ascend the wall. The section of the wall we went to was a tremendously steep climb. Series after series of upward stairs going up a hill with watch towers littered here and there. At some points the top of the hill seemed out of reach, but amazing views along the way provided the necessary motivation to reach the successively higher points. On the way up we met quite a bit of Chinese soldiers, who were also climbing the wall that day for some sort of team building exercise. Upon seeing my commie hat, many of them would chuckle and then ask for a picture, which I gladly granted as long as I could get one with my camera as well. The highest lookout point offered a breathtaking sight- rolling hills wrapped by an endless snake that was the wall. It looked as if the wall was sort of just placed on top of the mountains like a string rather than something that was built on top of the mountains. Wherever the mountains went, up or down, so did the wall. In other words, there was no noticeable excavation. The wall zigs and zags as far as the smog will let you see. It's really something worth seeing sometime throughout your life because pictures do not do it justice.

We walked back down the wall, taking a different path than we took up. Along the way we met a French man who was traveling alone. We got to talking a little bit, and upon finding that we were American he congratulated us. He didn't specify, but I instantly knew what he was talking about. And it was at that moment that I realized how proud I was to say I was an American.

The next day was Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square was in the early morning, and it was also quite cold. We couldn't get a peep out of our tour guides about the history of the place because there are guidelines on what the Chinese can say about their government. The square has great political significance. It was the sight for the declaration of the PCR in 1949 and as well as the location for a number of political protests. Perhaps the most prominent was the 1989 protests that ended in the massacre of many pro-democratic demonstrators. At the head of the square is Mao's Mausoleum, decorated with grand portrait of the chairman himself and all his former glory. Even though China today is pretty different from how it was under Mao, he is still a huge icon for nationalism. And hence, his face is everywhere. Street vendors will try to sell you Chairman Mao quote books (very entertaining) and Mao watches that have Mao's arm oscillating as the ticker (even more entertaining). But our tour guides were completely tight lipped the entire time. Apparently there are secret police in the area that are hired to eavesdrop on tour groups to make sure the guides don't say anything treasonous about the country. Who knows if that's true or not.

The Forbidden City is an ancient palace adjacent to Tiananmen Square. It was completed in 1420 and was used as the Chinese Imperial Palace from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. It is quite expansive and has the traditional architecture that you always envision in your mind when you think of ancient Chinese buildings. All the structures look almost exactly the same, except they carry in size. The place goes on forever, and I could only see so much of it before I felt like I was seeing the same thing over and over again. But just being in these historical sites is a little mesmerizing at times, especially since the theme of our entire voyage has been about the rise of China. In the core global studies course that everyone on the ship has to take we talked about several of these sights and places, so actually being there was like taking a walk back through time.

When the Chinese Emperor was tired of seeing the same square red buildings with yellow rooks in the Forbidden City he would hitch it up to his lake house, the Summer Palace. We visited there the next day. I thought of it as like the Walker Ranch for the Chinese Bush. It is built up a mountain and has a grand lake waterfront. The history is about the same of Forbidden City, maybe with one more hostile takeover at one point or another in history. Unlike the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace has diverse building structures and has lakes and waterways running through it. I would rather spend my time there than the Forbidden City too. AND it's the sight for some hilarious Chinese recreational activities. People come to the Palace to do their line dancing classes, their singing rehearsals, play cards, sing, etc. We definitely joined in a couple dance classes and watched some singing comedy acts before we left for the Beijing Zoo to see the Pandas and other great sights.

This last August I devoted about a month of my life watching the Olympics. I watched the more obscure events all day long and was glued to my couch for the prime time events at night. I don't know why, but I just think the idea of a global meeting to showcase the best of the best athletes (except for baseball) is so fascinating. So actually going to the Olympic stadiums in Beijing was a pretty big deal for me, especially since they all seemed so far away at the time I was watching them on TV.

The area where the Olympic Green is probably the most landscaped area of the city, but the pollution is horrendous. Before the Olympics, the Chinese shut down nearly every coal fired power plant in the area and kicked half of the cars off the road in efforts to clean the air. Locals I talked to said the air that August was noticeably cleaner, but that there was a different story goin' on while I was there. Straight above the sky was blue but the horizon would stay a permanent and daunting shade of gray. Anytime after 2 o clock the sun was at that angle that made it look as if the sun was setting even though it was just early afternoon. Anyhow, despite the smog, I was very excited as my bus parked in the lot of the National Indoor Stadium (where the gymnastics events where held). Across the street was the Water Cube and just next to that, as you all know, was the Bird's Nest. As we were arriving there were window washers repelling down the sides of the water cube cleaning its bubbly walls. It was the oddest sight, because their feet weren't stopped by walls of the building, rather the bubbles squished in as the washers rested against them. I always thought that even though the building looked like it was made out of rubber, it was actually still firm. But this was clearly not the case, as I saw some clear indentation action happening. Squishy walls. Awesome.

We went into the water cube first. Inside was pretty much how you'd expect- a very ethereal and aquatic vibe. Water fell from the walls of the main plaza, most of which was consumed with a fairly large fountain covering the ground. The main pool stadium is smaller than it looks on TV, but most things are. The lap pool where Phelps and others swam was drained for some reason but the diving pool that bordered it was full, with all diving platforms intact. Just outside the main stadium was a hallway with glass walls that looked down onto the warm-up pool, which was full, and actually seemed a lot bigger than the main pool. Throughout the whole building natural lighting came in through the bubble walls, it all felt like I was in some sort of futuristic space building. The Bird's Nest was similarly impressive, and was quite monstrous compared to any baseball or football stadium I've been to in the US. As you walk up to the building the elaborate steel weaving engulfs your vision. The structure is massive. Inside you can walk through the rows of seating and down onto the field and track where all the events took place. There was some type of costume showcase activity going down on the field, but I had no idea what was really happening. Being in the center of the field just turning around and looking at all the stands was mesmerizing. I took my time before walking back up through the bleachers and to the bus. This was our 4^th and last day in Beijing. The bus took us to the airport, and our feet took us to the plane, which took us to Shanghai, where our floating home was to meet up with us.

A thought that I've mulled over for quite some time while on this trip has been the idea of home and where that is for me. As long as I've known, the only place I've ever considered warm enough to call home is that blue house in Aptos. San Diego was never home for me. It probably never will be. It never felt like it, something was always slightly off. I knew my apartment on campus was just a place I stayed temporarily until I could get back home when school broke. But I don't feel the same way about the MV Explorer. When I return from a 4 day trip in any of these countries and turn the corner to see the ship I become elated. I know I have a room aboard where I can unwind and process everything I've just seen. And that's what I've come to realize a home is: a place where everything is safe again, a place that calms your stresses and senses. One of the best things about going on these multi day trips is coming back and feeling like I'm home again, because it's usually a feeling I only get about 4 times a year since I've started college. And here I get it every 2 weeks. And I love it. I have found another place where my heart is. I wonder what the withdraws will be like.

The first couple of days on the ship after port was very emotional for everybody. There was just a feeling in the air where you knew something just wasn't right, that something that was once there is now gone. I did not know Kurt that well, but the accident had touched everyone on board. What's more is that his death brought back a lot of the things I was feeling when Rachel died a little more than a year ago. I saw Kurt's closest friends on the ship going through some of the same things that my friends and I went through when Rachel had her accident. Seeing that is probably what hit closest to home for me. No one on this ship knows everyone else, but everyone's friend networks overlap to the point where everyone is connected. So even though a good portion of the ship, myself included, didn't know Kurt that well, we were all brought together by his death. Traveling the world like this and coming into poverty stricken countries as the rich westerners sometimes has you feeling invincible. The feeling that somehow all the afflictions of the world that impinge on all the people we've seen so far somehow don't extend to you. And then something like this happens, and for better or for worse, it brings us all back down to earth. The fragility of life is a paramount realization. It's something we should all be aware of. That's not to say that you should limit yourself. But that we should be aware. Informed decisions are better than ignorant ones. So we should all keep that in mind while we still can.

Love the ones you love.

Spenser

$6.95

 

The Agent Orange and Napalm sections were particularly appalling. "On October xx, 19xx, American forces fire bombed the village in this photograph, massacring hundreds children on their way to school." The photojournalism was surreal. A camera with bullet holes through it contained negatives of the last thing one photographer ever saw. Retired American tanks and artillery fortified the grounds. Graphic images of killing cells were hung next to a guillotine. At the end of the exhibit, a notebook with visitors' written impressions lied on a table. I opened it and wrote. "Don't let the memories of the past die with the fallen, lest history will repeat itself." It's impossible to go to Viet Nam without experiencing effigies of the war. The war is the period of every sentence. It's at the tip of every tongue. It's in every amputated beggar's cup. Everything that isn't about the war is about the war. My visit to the War Remnants Museum on the last day in port was the perfect punctuation to my time in Viet Nam. It was dark and biased, as it should've been. It closed all the ties, and brought an end to the constant feeling that once upon a not so long ago time my country devastated the people of this one, and due to heinous violence, immeasurable lives were lost from both sides. My time in Vietnam painted a better picture of the "Vietnam War" than any of my years in public school were able to provide.

 

First day out in Viet Nam we had a mission. We had heard amazing things about Vietnamese tailoring, so it was our mission to get our own experience of this great workmanship. So, first things first in Viet Nam was to get new suits! We had been planning our suit venture in Viet Nam for quite some time, so we had to do it right. That meant we had to have the perfect group dynamic when heading out to town to find the perfect tailor. What's the perfect group dynamic you ask? No girls. We had traveled with girls in every prior port but this time we needed a break, we needed a boy's night out. Or boy's day out, rather. We had a group of six: Todd, Jaime, Greg, Mark, Dan, and myself. The ship's activity desk had a list of tailor shops in Ho Chi Minh City that had come recommended from previous Semester at Sea voyages. Todd had somehow managed to get his hands on the name of a tailor shop that was not on the activity desk list, and having known that almost every single male (and even some females) were trying to get clothes made in Viet Nam, we decided that this unlisted place would be more secluded from SAS foot traffic and therefore was the place to go. We trekked out on foot from the city center, asking confused locals if they have heard of the place. We fumbled around quite a bit, but finally come up with an address and direction for this tailor shop, called My Sang. We finally arrive at the place and find that we had been duped somehow. The line of Semester at Sea students already getting fitted was overflowing out into the streets. Let's just wait it out over lunch, we thought, so we went down the street to grab our first Vietnamese meal in hopes that the line would die down.

 

Lunch was amazing and cheap, and it was there that we learned of the wonder of 333 beer, which became my beverage of choice throughout my stay in port. After our lunch break, we went out to see the line for the tailors, which turned out to be even longer than before. But we really wanted those suits. So we decide to suck it up and just wait in line. While in line, a man approached and said he'd help us pick out or fabrics for our suits. He walked us across the street to the Ben Thanh market (an AMAZING and really smelly indoor market that had every commodity you could think of, and some that you couldn't think of, all it ridiculously cheap prices if you're a good bargainer) to pick out fabrics. The fabric place occupied a cramped hallway in the market with various fabrics hanging from the tops of racks that were taller than two Vietnamese women. We get to the little hole in the wall place and the women operating the joint just start pointing in all over the place at different fabrics and pulling fabrics down from the walls for us to look at. The different materials extending up the walls of racks were very orderly and overlapping other fabrics in order to conserve space. I remember my first thought was along the lines of "how the hell do they keep it so nice and orderly if they tear everything down from the walls whenever a customer comes?" After all, I can barely fold my clothing, I couldn't imagine the task that was organizing all of that material.

 

After about 30 minutes of decisions, I picked out my fabrics for my suits. One was to be a Khaki color and the other was to be black with pinstripes. We had our fabrics wrapped up and were told to take them back across the street to the tailors. I couldn't tell if the fabric place was in any way associated with the tailors, but we weren't asked to pay any money for the fabrics we got, and the guy that lead us there definitely didn't seem to work at either the fabric place or the tailors, as he asked us to tip him after the whole ordeal before just walking off down a random street. So I don't know how that worked out. We took our fabrics to the tailors, and they measured us up in every which way, and told us to come back in a couple days. We paid half of the price right then and were to pay the other half when we picked them up. The price of the suits seemed completely arbitrary and more based on the quality of our bargaining skills than anything else. We ended up having to pay only $65 per suit, which I came to find was one of the better prices after I asked my other Semester at Sea friends how much they had to pay for theirs. Some had to pay as much as $85 per suit. It was night time by the time we were done getting fitted and everything, and the night market was beginning to set up. It's funny how something like dress clothes that we'll probably hardly ever wear had us so thrilled, but the idea of getting suits personally tailored and fitted put a tone of excitement in the air that night. We spent the rest of the evening browsing through the expansive night market that sprawled down every which street that motorbikes had populated just hours before. Dinner was some great Pho and 333. And then we had more 333. More 333 please…

 

The Cu Chi Tunnels are about an hour and a half from the city center where we were docked. The tunnels are an underground network spanning over 250 kilometers and were used by the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War to launch surprise guerilla attacks on their enemies and then seemingly disappear into thin air. The tunnels have 3 different levels and are quite technologically sophisticated. They Viet Cong would live in the tunnels for months at a time, so the tunnels had underground kitchens, dining rooms, watering holes, etc. For the kitchen, the smoke from the cooking would be taken to a chimney 100s of meters away from the actual kitchen before being released into the air so enemy aircraft would not discover the location of the tunnels via rising smoke. Most of the day to day activities took place on the first underground level of the tunnels. The deeper 2^nd and 3^rd levels were used primarily for escapement purposes if the first level was infiltrated, gassed out, or flooded out, by enemy forces.

 

I went to the Cu Chi Tunnels on my second day in Viet Nam, and it was a profound experience. The Vietnamese war garnered so much attention because it was the first major war to be photographed and presented to the people. Actually being at the tunnels where the war was fought forces you to realize the reality of this very gruesome and violent war. The tunnels are extremely tiny. There is no light down there and you have to crawl through them on your knees. And that's just the first level. As you descend down to the second level the air gets thinner and your head gets lighter. The third level is almost unbreathable and uncrawlable. The Viet Cong guerillas were not the best nourished people so as a consequence they had very slim body types, which the tunnels were built around. The tunnels are purposely curvy so that you wouldn't be able to shoot down them. So when crawling through them all you see are the windy walls of the tunnel- there is no end of the road or light at the end. I felt incredibly trapped and enclosed, and couldn't help but to think about these constraints. There were meters of earth between me and the air above and maybe 3 decades between me and the time when people actually died in these tunnels, whether it be by bullets or by suffocation from gas or flooding. If you die underground you don't have to be buried. All of these thoughts help to give you a better idea of the sheer ugliness of war. I started to feel light headed, and pressured, as if the whole thing could close in at any time. I was glad to resurface, and I had only been underground for probably less than 5 minutes. It's unbelievable. Some had to live down there for a month.

 

After seeing the tunnels we were given a demonstration of the many traps the Viet Cong had set up in the area to surprise their enemies. Many of the traps involved concealed doors covering a pit full of sharpened bamboo spikes that would impale anyone unfortunate enough to fall down it. The trap doors were so well hidden, making the concept of someone becoming victim to it so much more real. To really make sure that you didn't make it back out of the spiky pit, the bamboo would be covered in animal feces that would instantly infect the wounds of impaled soldiers. So even if you were able to be pulled out of the trap, and did survive the wounds, you would probably have to get your infected body parts amputated (if the infection didn't kill you beforehand). After the traps and weapons demonstration we were taken to the shooting range, where they had all the major weapons used in the war available to shoot. Carbines, AK 47s, M16s, M60s, you name it, they got it. The guns were earsplitting and commanding. Just hearing the bullets ringing brought harsh images of war into your mind. I ended up shooting a few rounds from the AK 47. It was the first time I had ever shot a gun before, and my ear muffs did little to mask the shrilling pangs and rings from the gun. The bullets fly faster than your eye can follow so it is almost impossible to aim with any accuracy at all. Just being there, standing between blasts and bangs and shooting bullets so fast I couldn't see where they were landing suddenly makes war a much more lucid thing. It made me realize how awful it would be to be on either side of a machine gun like the AK 47, and that I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone. On the way back to Ho Chi Minh after the tunnels we stopped a memorial for the Vietnamese guerilla soldiers. The memorial was composed was of hundreds and hundreds of lined tombs of fallen Vietnamese. There was a large section of the memorial where the graves had bodies but no names because some of the Viet Cong couldn't be identified for various reasons. In my past I have never seen a war memorial from the perspective of those fighting the United States rather than a memorial for the United States itself. It certainly tells a different story.

 

The next day 9 of my friends and I hired a tour guide to take us to the Mekong Delta, a vast estuary about 2 hours outside of Ho Chi Minh City where the Mekong River empties into the ocean. During the Viet Nam War the Mekong Delta was one of the locations where the US Navy operated their swift boat fleet while fighting against the Viet Cong. We drove out to the delta and spent the day in small row boats going through the delta, hopping from island to island visit with locals, eat native food, and see the local industries that are based out of the India. The rivers are extremely narrow and have great flora and trees bordering the banks, making the delta look like a bundle of weaved snakes from above. It's mandatory to wear rice hats when you're on the delta. They have this local taffy/coconut candy operation based in the delta that we got to observe, and a couple of lucky people (who probably aren't reading this) get some of this candy when I get home. I think I got one package of banana candy and one of chocolate. And yes, it will still be good by the time I get home.

 

That night we stayed close to port and walked around the markets stopping here and there to grab beverages and food. We came by one sidewalk restaurant place that had a terrarium of live eels, frogs, and other random critters just sitting out. We asked what the deal was with all the animals, and we were told that people would choose what the liked from the tank and the restaurant would gut and grill it right there for you. There was no way we could pass this up, it seemed like our immersion into culture depended on us eating something from out tank. Either that or we just did it for fun. It was hard to decide between the eels and lizards but we eventually ended up choosing a frog as our snack. The frog was quite plump and a color between brown and green. We didn't give him a name. The man reached his hand in and grabbed the frog we selected and took him around to the back of the sidewalk where a makeshift kitchen, with running hose water, was set up. The frog was delicately decapitated and then gutted out, leaving only the good parts for the grill. Sauces and spices were applied liberally, and in no time the frog was split between our group. I couldn't tell if it was the frog itself or the sauces they put on it, but the thing was delicious. It seriously tasted like some type of chicken with bomb marinade- the type you'd probably buy from Trader Joes, Whole Foods, or some small local place (sorry Safeway). That's how I knew I was going to have an interesting night, the rest of which won't be written about here.

 

The remainder of the trip involved various sightseeing and hanging out around the previously mentioned Ben Tanh market, which became a central hub of our operations, for better or worse. It was difficult to walk by the place without something catching your eye. Rarely did we pass the market without striking up a bargain and an exchange of dong (Dong is the Vietnamese currency, it's fun to use in sentences, but never take extra dong with you after leaving Viet Nam, I haven't found a currency exchange yet that will accept the communist dong). Another reason for our constant presence at the market was the market's proximity to our tailor shop. They were across the street from one another, and we had to go back to the tailor place at least 3 times to get re fitted for altercations (that's how you know it's a good place). We finally got our suits on the last day in port, right before we went to the War Remnants Museum. You should have seen our faces as we excitedly emerged from the tailor shop, black bags in hand, and hailed motorbike taxis to take us back to the ship. Riding on motorbike taxis with suit bags is no easy feat.

 

Thinking back, it is a little frightening how consumed we were with consuming while in Viet Nam. Not just with suits, but with everything, Commodities were so so cheap, and everywhere. Two dollar T-Shirts, and fifteen dollar legit camping backpacks. You start to think you want things you don't, just because the price is so right. But then this is juxtaposed with the inherent presence of the war. I couldn't live with myself if I hadn't given the man with no legs a dollar every time I saw him. But just because the war happened, doesn't mean that there can be no joy or excitement in life. The Vietnamese did not shrug when they found I was from America. In fact they were actually extremely friendly and welcoming. They made sure I didn't feel like I was to blame for the turmoil caused by my country three decades ago. Why? Because they themselves have gotten over the war. It is an element of their history that they are done mulling over. That is not to say that they want to forget it, but that they realize that the war wasn't the end of the road. Life goes on, and we use the events from the past to enhance our future, not to hinder it. And an enhanced future requires one to be happy and content, whether this be by buying things at a market from time to time or spending time with the ones you love. After all, I was just a tourist in the market, which grew to become a symbol of a trivial consumption I struggled to accept despite my participation in the purchasing. I had to take a step back and realize that the market was just as much for native Vietnamese and was certainly populated by such, so therefore I didn't feel as if I boasting my rich white dollar by going to the market. I was purchasing alongside natives that were doing the same thing as me, and probably getting lower prices. Good for them. Good for me.

 

The second day after leaving Viet Nam was November 5^th. We were half a day ahead of America at that time, which meant that the morning of our November 5^th was the night of America's November 4^th. I am finishing this entry a couple weeks after the event. We all know what happened on this day. A new paramount will be written into the history books. I was happy. And content.

 

"This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can."

 

 
 

• Barack Obama
  

 

Spenser

    

Hanky Panky

    “Do you know when the next bus or boat from Jerantut to Tamen Negara is?”

    A blank stare said he didn’t speak English. It was raining pretty hard now, and lightning flashes in the distance gave me enough light to jot down some thoughts and logistics in my journal. A 3 hour bus ride en route to Jerantut had turned into 4, 5, and then 6 about 20 kilometers ago when one of the bolts holding the wheel to the axle fell off. From Jerantut we had planned on taking the last afternoon boat up the river to Tamen Negara, but that had left without us on it quite some time ago. We had heard of a connecting bus that could also take us there so we would try for that.

I tried the person in the next row, asking the same question: “Do you know when the next bus or boat from Jerantut to Tamen Negara is?”
The man chuckled a little bit.

“Tomorrow”

    I was traveling with just one other person, Amanda (I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no), who planned our entire itinerary, but we hadn’t quite expected this. Jerantut is a quaint little town in mid east Malaysia. Lonely Planet recommends not spending much time there because there is nothing to see. And by the looks of things we’d have to spend the night there, so here’s to hoping that there is at least one place to stay. Our hopes were fulfilled, as we got off the bus a place to stay found us. A man from what was probably the only hostel in town greeted us as we were getting off and drove us to the hostel. It was still raining. We checked into the hostel and asked where could find a place to eat, hoping that at least a couple places would still be open this late at night. We were directed to a small Chinese restaurant filled with locals, probably one of the only places open. As we were walking to the place cars would slow down, roll down their windows, and the people inside would just rubber neck us as they slowly passed. Clearly this wasn’t a place that saw many light skinned foreigners. When we got to the restaurant we were seated with similar glares and pointed at dishes on the semi English menu to indicate what we wanted. First order of business was a 50 cent beer. It had been a long day.
    Where should we begin? Earlier that morning we had taken an 8AM flight from Penang, where the ship was docked, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. From Kuala Lumpur we were to take the aforementioned bus to Jerantut, and from there a 3 hour river ride to Tamen Negara. We made it to Kuala Lumpur soundly, but once there we were answered with puzzled faces by non English speaking locals from whom we asked the direction of the bus station. One man had overheard us asking someone else and offered to help us out since he spoke English. His name was Ridz. He told us the next bus didn’t leave for quite some time. We got to talking and he offered to take us out to tea, an offer which we accepted, of course. He said we reminded him very much of his American roommates and that we weren’t like the typical Americans he witnesses. This was a good thing. He then continued to tell us, much to our fascination, his theory of race and ethnicity, which was the concept of a book he was writing. This book would investigate the interactions between Asian, specifically Malaysian, and Western cultures. It was his observations that Malaysian women would often ditch their ethics and indigenous culture in order to be seen hanging off the arm of a white boyfriend, leaving Malaysian men out as some type of inferior breed to the white man. It was this interaction that he hoped his book could help elucidate. Reminded me for some reason of The Game, although when looking back I’m not sure why, because the connection between the two is a long shot.We eventually exchanged e-mails and headed out to the bus station for our journey to Jerantut, with the ultimate goal of getting to Tamen Negara by the end of the night. We clearly didn’t make it, and as already discussed, we had no options to stay in Jerantut for a night, eating at glaring Chinese restaurants. I actually really enjoyed the remote honky tonk (borrowed from Sarah Palin’s phrase book) nature of Jerantut, despite feeling utterly out of place.
    Now resuming from where we once left off: waking up the next morning in Jerantut. A van from our hostel picked us up after brekky (AKA breakfast) and whisked us to the bank of the river. We boarded a very long and narrow motorized canoe type vessel, completely wooden, for the 3 hour ride up the river. Three hours of serenity and the noises of nature. Perfect temperature, a nice breeze in my face, with a relaxing pace and just the right amount of a little rocking was a great formula for me at that point in time. Seldomly catching my falls in and out of sleep, I marveled at the beauty of my surroundings. Bird songs gave soundtracks to the lush green scenery. We passed herds of water buffalo bathing up to their necks. On the river there was nothing that existed except me and everything else.
    After 3 hours of bliss and zoning in and out of space and time, we had made it to Tamen Negara. Tamen Negara is literally translated to “National Park” in Malay. It is a sweeping rain forest in eastern Malaysia. It is the oldest forest in the world, having not been affected by the previous ice age or volcanic activities. It is navigated by a network of weaving rivers and waterways. It is the home of several jungle animals such as leopards, monkeys, and even elephants, among other jungle related things and activities, such as night safaris, river rafting, and hiking. In short, it was a European honeymooner’s paradise. Upon arriving, our boat had docked us alongside a floating restaurant that was anchored on the river in front of the main park center. We were starving so we ate at this floating restaurant, which turned out to have amazingly cheap and tasty Chinese food. The dishes were all good portions and only about 5 to 6 ringgits each ($1.50 – 2 USD). There were about 5 or 6 of these floating restaurants along the river bank, and they all had extraordinary food that was great, so we ended up eating all our meals on the river. By floating restaurants, I mean that the restaurants were literally just large platforms floating on the river that were held to the shore by a few ropes. All the food was cooked on kitchens that were on the floating platforms themselves. To get to the restaurants you’d have to hire a boat for one ringgit (about 30 cents) to take you and dock alongside one of the restaurants for you to get out.
    After filling our tummies we headed to the park center and grabbed a key to a hostel where would be staying that night. The living quarters at the park headquarters consisted of everything from multiperson hostels to private multi room bungalows depending on your pay grade and roughing it grade. The hostel rooms were cheap, and they ended up having air conditioning even though they weren’t supposed to, so it turned out to be a good deal. The hostel room we were in had 8 beds, but there was only one other person sleeping there with us, so it was almost just as private as one of the bungalows for an eighth of the price. Not that privacy in the jungle is high ranking on my list of concerns; I was just happy for the free A/C. On the way to put our bags down in our room we met some monkeys who hung out with use for a while. Don’t worry, none were foaming at the mouth.
    After dropping our stuff, we went on a river ride into the jungle by motorized wooden canoe. The canoe seated 4, and we were joined by a honeymooning English couple, who made for good small talk. After about a 45 minute ride up the river, me getting significantly splashed along the way by the combination of minor rapids and having the front seat, we docked in the sand at the base of a jungle trail. After about a 20 minute hike we came to a natural cascading swimming hole where the puffer fish couldn’t bite you because the rapids were too strong for them to be able to navigate the area. There were about 20 – 30 other people there by the time we got there. From the looks and sounds of it, they were all probably European. Maybe some Australians. I swam with the Euros for some time and then a not so great idea popped into my head. Just upstream of the swimming hole was a pretty rough cascading rapid. It wasn’t huge or anything, but there was a lot of water moving down it. How cool it would be, I thought, if I could somehow skip my way across the rocks at the top of the rapid to get to the center of the river and have a triumphant photo taken of me standing atop the biggest rock in the center of the cascades. You can see where this is going.
    I start skipping my way across the rocks upstream, faring pretty well at first, I thought. A couple Euros turned to look and on their faces I saw the same blank glares that I was given in Jerantut. I eventually got pretty close to the middle, to the point where I had only one more rock to cross to, the one with the biggest gap between it. I started to slide my way across and sort of stuck a foot in the water to get a feel for the strength of the water falling between the two rocks. Very strong. But not too strong, right? Right… I sort of jump forward into the water with the hopes that moving water would land me at the bank of the center rock I was trying to get to. Instead, the moving water was so strong that it started to pull me between the two rocks with amazing force. The words “Oh,” and “shit,” repeated in my mind. I made one last attempt to grab ahold of the central rock I was aiming for. No. Sometimes in life you make choices that bring you to a place where you no longer have the ability to make the choices to get you back from that place. This was one of those moments. Down the rapids I went, out of my control, and I feared for the maintenance of my currently unbroken bones, and my life. Thank god for calcium. Or milk, rather. I crashed down to the rocks at the bottom, body completely submerged and rolling through the rapids for a few seconds until I quickly rolled into water shallow enough for me to get my footing. I was definitely too rattled to realize I was bleeding from my foot (and a pretty nice bruise would later appear there) but it was actually quite fun, considering all bones were intact. I stood up to more blank stares from the Euros. How crazy they must have thought I was… Amanda immediately informed me that the entire event was documented on her camera. What a relief, I thought, that I didn’t experience that ridiculousness alone. I asked one of the Euros for some bandages. I was given two band aids when we returned back to the lodge.

    The next day we woke up early for our comped breakfast (on the hostel) and headed out on a hike to the world’s longest canopy walk. We tried to follow signs as best we could, but they were either in Malay or non descript English. About an hour into it we got to the top of a great vantage point that overlooked a jungle valley, but no canopy walk, so we started to back track, we knew the canopy walk wasn’t that far. We eventually found one of the park tour guides stumbling out from an unmarked trail, and he directed us down the side of a mountain which took us straight to the entrance of the canopy walk. When we got there the line was huge, at least an hour and a half long, but by some magical performance by Amanda we were bumped to the front of the line.
    The canopy walk was a rope walkway suspended by platforms built at the tops of some very tall trees. We were walking on narrow strips of plywood that were strewn across horizontally laying ladders. These ladders holding the plywood walkway were being suspended by the rope webbing and the whole canopy walk was about half a kilometer long. And it was high. At one point I looked down and could not see the ground because there was so much foliage from the canopy blocking my sight. When the trees that the ropes were anchored to swayed, the whole walk way rocked back and forth as I jumbled my way across. I got to the end of the track in about a half hour, and upon getting down we jumped in a photograph with a Malaysian tour group before heading back to the lodging area.

    We had heard of a Malaysian elephant sanctuary that was somewhere around Tamen Negara. The national park itself was home to a couple hundred wild jungle elephants but because of increased foot traffic during the years the elephants have mostly retreated to pretty far back into the jungle. It would have taken about a 9 day hike to get the chance to see one of the elephants, so this elephant sanctuary was our best alternative. We just had no method of getting there, as it was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. After asking the lodge and other independent tour agencies if they could help us out, and failing to get anywhere, we were finally approached by a Malaysian man who said he was leaving Tamen Negara for some other city and he offered to drive us to the elephant sanctuary for about 200 ringgits (which was an amazingly good deal, by the way). Only problem is that he wouldn’t be able to drive us back. No problem! We headed out on what turned to be a fairly lengthy 2 and a half hour drive through endless rubber tree and palm oil plantations. Our driver had Michael Jackson remixes (not the actual songs) on repeat the entire time. I think I heard Smooth Criminal like 5 times. The beauty is in the repetition. The place was really in the middle of nowhere.
    We arrived at the elephant sanctuary to sounds of roaring elephants in the distance like it was some dinosaur theme park or something. I went to the bathroom and heard elephants snarling in what sounded like the stall next to me. When we got there a posse of elephants was hanging out head deep in a river bordering the parking lot. You know, just chillin. We then went over to the bathing area and watched as the elephants were directed out of the river and into the showers where the staff washed them down. In another section of the sanctuary there were baby elephants roaming around. We borrowed some peanuts from other people and hand fed them, and gave them big elephant hugs. After spending a little more time there we decided it was time to head out.
    There were no taxis, buses, or any type of public transportation leaving the place, so we walked out to the parking lot and stuck our thumbs up. Very ambitious, I know. After no time at all, two Australian women (probably in their mid 50s to early 60s- we found out they were Aussies after their accents spoke to us) walked by us and we asked if they could give us a ride… to anywhere.

    “Oh of course,” they said. Score.

    We waited for another Malaysian woman the two were friends with and the taxi driver they had hired for the day. They told the taxi driver we were their family that they had met up with and we were going back to Kuala Lumpur- about a 4 hour drive at that time of day. All with no extra cost, or any cost to us at all (we offered, no doubt). We got to talking during the ride and we learned that the two Aussies were nurses who were supposed to be attending a huge nursing conference in Kuala Lumpur. The nurses decided to turn that conference into a retreat, so they ditched that day. The Malaysian woman lived in Kuala Lumpur and was a family friend of one of the nurses, helping them hooky their conferences by guiding the two around the country. Sounds like they knew how to have some fun. We talked and talked, and something in the discussion prompted the Malaysian woman to tell us her very personal life story and the relationship with her children. I won’t share it here, because she told us things with tears rolling down her face that she wouldn’t even tell her husband. It was incredibly touching and enlightening, and all I have to say is I love you mom and dad.
    After the 4 hour drive we all made it to the hotel that the nurses were staying it in Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian woman, Carol, said that if we waited a few minutes for her husband Phang to arrive they would be able to drive us to Chinatown where we could find a hostel for the night. We took them up on that offer and as they were dropping us off in Chinatown they invited us to go to dinner with them. Phang was a member of the rotary club in Kuala Lumpur and they were having an executive meeting at an extremely exclusive golf resort in Kuala Lumpur. Thankfully I packed one collared shirt. And the hostel had an iron.
    Phang and Carol picked us up from Chinatown two hours later and took us to the rotary dinner. All this was on the house by the way, and the food was probably some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten in my life. We got to meet all the past presidents of the rotary club and their significant others. We were probably the youngest people in the room by at least 3 decades, but we still had an amazing time hearing about all the projects the rotary club puts on for the community and getting to know the people in attendance, who all spoke English fluently. After exchanging e-mails and taking pictures with what seemed like the entire club, Phang and Carol said they would now whisk us about town. (Mom: This is the couple that asked for some Italian recipes, so please e-mail those to me so I can pass them along) They gave us an amazing night tour of the city. Kuala Lumpur is more developed than most western cities, and is absolutely beautiful at night. It has the Petronas Towers, which I’m sure you’d recognize if you saw a picture of them. They are extremely shiny twin towers with a bridge connecting them at the 40th floor or something, and they used to be the tallest buildings in the world when they were completed in 1998. To this day, they are the tallest twin towers in the world, rising to 1,482 feet. All the skyscrapers have amazing architecture. Cool sights and lights are to be seen everywhere. The development of the city all occurred within the last 10 or so years, so all the buildings are very new and sparkly.
    Anyways, Phang and Carol are lifelong members of some very exclusive clubs of Kuala Lumpur- you know the type that only admit one new person every couple of years and cause seniors to brag about their memberships after they’re retired. They said that the only reason they were able to be in these clubs is because they had applied for membership when Kuala Lumpur was a very young city. If they tried to get in now they probably wouldn’t be accepted. They took us to see two of these different clubs, which were pretty vacant since no events were going on that particular night, but nonetheless interesting to see. We drove around the city by night for a few more hours, stopping at key locations for sweet photo ops, and finally returned to the hostel for bed time. I got new friends and a nifty rotary club garment out of the night. And a few great stories.

    The next morning we caught an early flight out of Kuala Lumpur back to Penang Island where our ship was docked. It was the last day in port, and I spent running around the city that I hadn’t yet seen much of, and hanging out with monkeys at the botanical gardens. There are a lot of monkeys in Malaysia. I made it back to the ship by about 1600 to give me enough time to unwind and write postcards before we sailed.

    I’d say that Malaysia was probably the best country on the voyage so far, which was not something I was expecting. For as much as I did do in Malaysia, there was also so much I didn’t do. So much stuff to go back to. It was remarkably developed, the food was great, and the people were the friendliest people I’d encountered thus far. I don’t know if Austin reads this continuously or not, but you should screw backpacking through Europe and start thinking about backpacking through South East Asia. I know I’m already thinking of my plans to return.


Until next time.


Spenser.

The Crop and the Pest

  We had just come back from a historical tomb in Delhi, and our tour bus was stopped at a red light. Knock knock knock. I peer at the window to see two children outside in the street banging on the side of the bus, hoping to get the attention of us, the tourists, that were on board. One was a little girl with bandages covering both arms, the other a 5 year old looking boy holding an infant. No adults, or parents, in sight. Knock knock knock. They got our attention; about half the bus was looking at the windows down at them. With the eyes of the bus on her, the girl starts unraveling the bandages, exposing charred and mangled red flesh circling her forearms. Her wounds were precise, in the same spot on both arms and having clearly defined edges between her normal skin and the mangled skin. Our tour leader explained that due to the exactness of her wounds, they were probably done intentionally so she would be able to get more money from begging. Donors give the most when they feel like they’re helping those who appear helpless. She parades her wounds along each window, hoping that one us rich tourists would open the window and drop some money down. The windows on the buses don’t open for this reason.
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  India was absolutely, without a doubt, the most intense and overwhelming experience of my life. Nothing I can say here will be accurate enough to describe the immensity that is India. There was nothing that could have been said to me that could have prepared me for this.
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  Lets start at the beginning: First day in Chennai- I need some rupees (Indian money). I get off the gangway and head off to the port gate with my small group. There are few real taxis in India, instead they have these very small three wheeled vehicles called Rickshaws. The Rickshaw has a small two stroke motor, and two small benches, one in front for the driver, and one directly behind it for the passengers. The shape of the vehicle kind of reminds me of one of the old VW Beetles with a sort of rounded dome top and maybe half the size. The sides are open, so there are no doors to inhibit climbing in and out if on the run. Instead of a steering wheel there are handle bars with a clutch and break kind of like a motorcycle. The vehicle can fit 3 people snuggly, one driver up front and two people on the bench in back. 3 people on the back is a little more crunched, but doable.
So we get to the gate of the port and we’re immediately stormed by at least 15 rickshaw drivers competing for our fair. They rush up to my group of 4 and start pulling us in different direction. “You, come this way my friend into my Rickshaw.”Everyone in my group has like 3 different hands pulling on them. It’s absolute chaos. Sensory overload. We solidify our group together, push off many of the people pulling on our arms, and try to focus on just a couple drivers.

  “We need to go to the ATM, how much will it be?”

  At first they tell us our group will have to split up into 2 and 2 because by law not that many are able to fit into one Rickshaw. We believe them on this, and agree to split up. After some bargaining we arrange to be taken to the ATM for 100 Rupees per person (about $2USD). We know we’re being overcharged, because the US Embassy Agent who had briefed us said that fares for locals are never over 50 Rupees. We’re not locals, and we just want to get out of the chaos of being pulled on from every which direction, so we agree on 100 and off we go. Driving in India is absolutely crazy. I think one of the previously mentioned US Embassy Agents summed it up best during the diplomatic briefing by saying, “The lane lines are coincidental.”What a marvelous way to put it. On the Rickshaw we whizzed in and around traffic, and several times weaved through oncoming traffic to pass up slower traffic going in our own direction. I’ve always been taught in the past that moving against oncoming traffic is how people die, so needless to say all, the rickshaw driving in India was quite the thrill. We eventually make it alive to the ATM, get some money, and hop back in the same Rickshaw. The driver then takes us to this touristy shop with lots of Indian fabrics and sculpted figurines, jewelry, etc etc. the driveway is full of about 8 other Rickshaws of Semester at Sea students. All the drivers of the rickshaws are huddled around a clipboard and our writing things down on it. We found out later that all the drivers were paid off to take all the Semester at Sea students to this one overpriced tourist shop no matter where they ask to go. Frustrating. We go in the shop, not really knowing why we had been taken there, and ask our driver to take us back to the boat. He says he needs to get gas, so we stop at a gas station and he starts to fill up. While filling up he pokes his head in the rickshaw and tells us that we each owe 1000 rupees. This is up from 100. Having already been upset that we were taken to the janky tourist shop without asking, we get out of his rickshaw, and tell him we refuse to pay him that, we had agreed on only 100. He acts confused, and eventually says we’ll only owe 100 rupees and that we should get back in. After some more price confirming, we get in, and tell him to just take us back to the ship. Once on the road again he ups the price again, this time to 500 rupees, saying that we had went to 3 locations (ATM, shopping, and to the gas station), and that since he took us 3 places instead of just one that we have to pay him more than 100. We’re fed up with this guy. We mitigate him until we get back to where we were docked. I give him 200 rupees, 100 for to and from the ATM by my figuring (even though we originally agreed on 100 for the whole round trip) and we collectively walk away to him continuing to demand more. Sorry bud. Annoyed in India was my first impression, aye aye.

  The remainder of the day we I went on a school field trip to St. Thomas’s Mount, which was the hill in Chennai that St. Thomas the apostle (AKA “Doubting Thomas”) was martyred. Legend tells that in the first century he was carving a cross atop this specific hill in what is now the present day Chennai when a pigeon hunter accidentally shot him with an arrow. I realize the martyr of St. Thomas has some great religious significance, but being accidentally shot by an arrow has got to be one of the most liberal interpretations of the word “martyr”I’ve ever come across. But I digress. Besides the temple constructed for St. Thomas, there is also an orphanage at the mount for abandoned Indian children. We toured the orphanage, learned some of the history from the nuns who were showing us around. So many cute little children. At the time I felt like the orphanage conditions were quite meager. But thinking back, I’m saddened that not all unwanted children have the opportunity to be in an orphanage like that, because when compared to some other living conditions that are to be discussed, this orphanage actually had stellar conditions. Hindsight is always 20/20.

  As a side note: on Rickshaws: Our record for India was seven in the Rickshaw. On the last day we had a particularly awesome driver and 4 of us got in to be taken to Pondi Bazaar, an open air market. I snug of front with the driver to experience the intensity of weaving through traffic in the front seat. En route to the market, we, by complete random chance, see two of our friends from the boat walking along the sidewalk. Chennai has millions and millions of people in it so this was literally like seeing a needle in a hey stack. We yell from the street at them to catch another Rickshaw and meet us at Pondi. My driver looks at me, stops the Rickshaw in the middle of traffic, and waves our two friends over. They run the street, and pile in the back, giving us a grand total of 7 people on the Rickshaw. It was truly amazing. Weaving through traffic with 7 people crammed into the space that belongs to three people tops was fantastic. The driver didn’t even charge us extra, but we gave him a great tip.

  The rest of my trip in India is somewhat of a blur. Wake at 5:45AM to leave for an early flight to Delhi with a group of about 70 SAS students. I got the middle seat, between two SAS teachers, Oceanography on the aisle, Drama on the window. Neither were teachers of classes I was taking, but we did have some good conversation about the woes of Sarah Palin, among other things. We arrive in Delhi and eat at a nice Indian restaurant. Indian food consists of several different pastes, brightly colored chicken, and one of the most amazing carbohydrates ever created, Nan bread. (Someone look of the recipe to buttered Nan please and get back to me.) After lunch we go see the Gandhi grave/memorial. That invoked some pretty amazing feelings, but I was still so tired at the time I was a little numb. We tour around Delhi for a couple more hours, drive by some legislative buildings, and then head off to the train station for our ride to Agra.

  It was afternoon late afternoon by the time we reach the train station. Sensory Overload part two. The place is a hub of human activity. Follow the person in front of you, or you’ll get lost, possibly forever. Navigating a group of 70 extremely out of place looking students through an Indian train station is nothing short of insanity. Train stations are not commonly used by tourists, so we got stares and glares from everyone. Walking along the platform all the trains we saw had only open cars with electricity. Windows were open air and barred, and the doors were just openings that didn’t appear to close. Rats crawled about the floor and large insects accumulated on the cushionless seats. Everyone in the group is thinking “No way in hell is this our train…”as we walked along it. After all we were promised air conditioning. And it was 80 and humid. We finally get to two nicer cars, which were the ones we would take. These train cars were certainly a luxury compared to the open ones we had just seen, but that doesn’t mean they were absent of bugs and rats. The car did have windows, but the glass was so foggy and dirty from neglect that you couldn’t see anything out of them. Air conditioning worked in half of the cart. The toilets were squatter toilets. (If you don’t know what a squatter toilet is, let it be sufficient to say that they are target practice for men and acrobatics for women) This was all fine and well with me, I got over the conditions after about 10 minutes as soon as the A/C kicked in and was infinitely thankful that we at least had a car that was enclosed and had lights. And hey, after all the train ride was only a short 2 hours, they told us. But then it wasn’t…Oh how they lie. 2 hours became 5 and a half. Keep in mind we had been up since 5:45 in the morning, so as the length of the trip increased we all started to conk out to sleep, leaning up against the walls of the cart so the bugs and roaches could mingle on our shoulders and heads. “At least this car is better than the one attached to it,”I kept thinking. And I was happy.

  It was nearly midnight by the time the train, roaches included, made it to Agra. The train station there was similarly chaotic, but the night had brought hundreds of homeless campers who had set up their sleeping arrangements on the platform and the surrounding muddy outskirts. Rats scurry from one sleeper to the next. . Similar sights met me as we traveled by bus through the streets of Agra to our hotel. “Sidewalks”were lined with bodies, supposedly living. We were told that it was not uncommon for men in wheel barrows to come through the sidewalks in the unthinkable hours of the morning to collect the dead. I wondered how they distinguished the people from the bodies. Mixed with the sleeping were bustling shanty markets and shops, selling hot food, snacks, second hand everything, etc. Shops were made out of the rubbles of decrepit buildings, and were often fortified with wooden logs. The dichotomy between the sleeping and the sleepless, all packed along the same streets, on the same sidewalks even, was incredible. We got to the hotel and had a late dinner of India’s finest pastes and carbs. It was very tasty. Sleep.

  Wake. 6 AM alarm. We head out to see the Taj Mahal by sunrise. Even though it was barely day, the children outside the Taj were in full force trying to sell little trinkets, pens, postcards, etc. to the camera clad tourists. They make more money from selling things to tourists than they do going to school, so it is very common for lower caste families to have their children selling by the age of 5, if that. I’ll spare you the details here, but at the Taj I experienced the most insistent heckling of my life from people trying to sell stuff. They would come up as you were waiting in line to get into the Taj area and tug on your clothes and pitch their sales. The trick is to look them in the eye and tell them “No Thank you,”very firmly. To avoid confrontation with every single seller, we tried to have some fun and tell people we were from Spain, Romania, Russia, anywhere where they don’t speak a lot of English. Except this didn’t work because they all, children included, knew the selling phrases of the languages of all these countries. I remember hearing a little girl yell “Mira! Mira!!”as I scurried away from her after saying I only spoke Spanish.

  To describe the Taj would take a vocabulary I am not privy too. The structure is completely made out of white marble, all of it carved with amazing details and inlayed with semi precious stones. Because of the nature of the marble, the appearance of the Taj changes depending on the light conditions- in effect you are never actually seeing the Taj, but how the sun glistens off it. We were there at sunrise, so the marble turned shades of purple, red, orange, then yellow as the world turned over. There are great surrounding structures on either side and expansive gardens and ponds in front. The back edge is bordered by a river that looks out to another historical fort in the distance. Inside is the mausoleum for the women who the structure was created for in the 1600s. The Taj was built by the 5th Mughal emperor, I believe, who was lamenting over the death of his favorite wife (he had multiple, of course). What a true romantic.

  India is the ultimate heterotopia. Here we have the Taj Mahal, a wonder of the world, surrounded by the city of Agra, where the brilliant radiance of the Taj doesn’t little to brighten the extreme poverty embracing the city. All in the same place, at the same time.

  As another side note, I felt like I was on an urban safari while traveling around Delhi and Agra by bus. I saw cows, boars, bulls, elephants, monkeys, water buffalo, and camels. Cows are sacred in India, so if a cow comes up to your booth at the market and starts eating all your vegetables there is really nothing you can do about it. In fact it’s considered good luck. Sometimes they’ll even dress up their cows with nice linens and jewelry and have it wonder around the cities to give people it crosses good luck. They call these cows “Holy cows.”No joke. Another thing about street life in India, is that most places don’t have plumbing. Often times there will be one water pipe with continuously flowing water that entire area will use. This means bathroom are few and far between. Fields and dirt patches on the sides of the roads served as good defecation grounds. You wouldn’t believe how many people I saw shitting on the side of the road in broad daylight. There weren’t even outhouses or organized bathroom holes. It was literally pick a spot and plop.

  After the Taj we tour Agra some more, making it to all of the great Mughal forts and deserted cities or marble and sandstone. Some of these structures are just amazing; many have expansive catacombs and underground tunnels spanning over 200 miles long. It’s sad that the most conventional beauty of these places is the sprawling marble and sandstone structures of the past, rather than the livelihoods of the people of the present. We made it back to the Taj again to view it at sunset. Yes, it’s amazing. But as I write this now, the events of my India trip are fading in and out of memory. It’s difficult to admire such beauty amidst such great poverty. We would go on to spend 1 day in Agra and another day in Delhi before returning to Chennai by train. The return train was much nicer and faster than the one we arrived on, but the train station experience was just as sprawling as I had remembered it. Homeless children would carry infants hoping to get a couple rupees here and there. Beggars with mangled limbs crawled to your feet and tugged on your shirt. A woman walked by and tried to sell us her baby for 300 Rupees ($6 US). It’s horrifying, but this is all true, this all really happened. This is life changing for me. This is life for others.

  It is the things like these that really demonstrated the lack of development in India. You wonder what must be going through someone’s mind if they’re prepared to sell their child for a meal. What is life like for someone confined to the earth because of limbs that never fully developed from malnutrition? And how hard is the decision for those who mangle themselves intentionally to appear like they are afflicted with the conditions that others actually have because it gets them a good begging salary. It’s economics. You really have to experience it first hand to understand how overwhelming the poverty is. Even then, I’d say my comprehension of what I experienced is fleeting. Upon returning from my Delhi/Agra trip and meeting up with my other friends who had traveled elsewhere around India I heard other profound stories. Several of my friends told of their ventures to Varanasi. Varanasi is the holy city of the Hindu’s, and it is believed to be the oldest standing city in the world. The holy Ganges River runs through it, which is believed to cleanse the people who use it. Varanasi is where Hindu’s go to die. The banks of the river contain crematories where bodies are constantly burning. However, if you’re a pregnant woman or an infant the religion prevents you from being cremated, so such bodies are always flowing downstream. Not only that, but because the river is believed to be cleansing, the native population bathes in this same river, washing themselves as dead bodies float pass them. The Ganges is supplied by melting ice from the Himalayas, so it is also where much of the drinking water of India is piped from. It gets to a point where this experience makes you realize that you just cannot help everyone. Sure a few dollars here and there will brighten someone’s day, but what about everyone else? Comprehension of the immensity of India’s poverty is over bearing, so rather than focusing on the big picture you begin to realize that you can only affect those who you are immediately with at any one moment. If everyone always thinks small picture, the big picture will be drawn as a consequence. It is here that the hopeless are most admirable and the helpless must be helped. If not, outlooks are grim.

  “There will always be terrorism and instability in the world,”Desmond Tutu explained to us on our last day in South Africa, “as long as there continues to be conditions that make people desperate.”
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Spenser