$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