Hong Kong, Beijing, and Qingdao, China

Unfortunately, I am not writing this blog entry on the ship, and therefore I do not have the dates of my trip. But I will update the entry later on with the dates. Anyways, as I said before I am not on the ship, but instead I am currently on the bullet train in Japan travelling to Tokyo. So what a better time then now to write my entry about China! I am sorry in advance for the length, but it was an amazing experience in China.

The trip in China started out in Hong Kong. When first arriving in Hong Kong, all my friends only had the first day to hang out because they were all leaving on SAS trips to Beijing the second day so immediately upon getting off the ship we went to the Star Taxi, which is a water ferry. Traveling across the harbor by this ferry was beautiful because we were able to look out at the buildings of Hong Kong. Now this city puts every other city I have ever seen (New York and Chicago) to shame!! Hong Kong is beyond gorgeous. And as night they put on a light show, which consists of the skyline lighting up to music. Each building is equipped with lights on the faces and lasers on the roof. But anyways, after taking the ferry to Hong Kong Island my friends and I went to explore. Our first stop on our exploration was at a restaurant for Dim Sum (Jeff I know you’re proud). Ordering Dim Sum was an experience, first of all, we did not know that you had to call the waiter over to order, second of all, everything was in Chinese (with no pictures), and third of all, none of us knew how much food to order! After staring at the menu for about 5 minutes, trying to compare the characters on the menu with the order form, the one English speaking waitress came over and helped us out. It was definitely a funny experience.

After eating Dim Sum, we travelled to the Worlds’ longest Escalator to start making out way up to the top of Hong Kong Island. As we got about half way to the top, we stopped off to get Krispy Kremes (directly out of the oven) and o walk over to a temple. The temples are really interesting in China, mainly because they are constantly burning incents making it slightly hard to breathe while inside them. Despite it being hard to breathe the temple we went to was gorgeous. It was also interesting because the whole time we were there, many Chinese locals were there praying and giving their offerings to the Gods. It was definitely a sight to see!! Finally after leaving the temple we decided that we would head back to the ship to get ready for dinner and see the light show.

We found a Cantonese Restaurant to eat at for dinner, and in the end ended up eating dinner next to the deans and other faculty from the ship. Ordering in Chinese food restaurants as I said about Dim Sum is hard! In fact, the only way to order is by looking at the pictures and decided what foods look yummy. So to order dinner, we looked at pictures and just picked what looked really good. Thankfully our method of ordering worked, because all the food that was brought to us was delicious. After dinner my friends and I decided to travel up to Victoria Peak, which is a place that you can look over the whole city of Hong Kong. Upon arrival at the top of Victoria Peak I was beyond speechless for the first time in China. The sights of the city lit up at night is beyond amazing, and unfortunately pictures just don’t capture the sight that I saw. Hopefully with some editing, the pictures will show even half of what I saw.

The next day all my friends left for Beijing, but since I was staying an extra night in Hong Kong I decided that I would go off and explore Hong Kong on my own. So after leaving the ship I went into a tourism office to pick up a map and ask where they thought I could walk to. While in the tourism office, I bumped into two SAS girls whom I knew by face. After saying hello I asked them what they were planning on doing for the day and they said they were going to Disneyland (yes, there is one in Hong Kong). After they told me what they were doing they asked if I would want to join them. SO being that I had no plans, I hopped on for the trip. TO get to Disneyland in Hong Kong was ridiculously easy, all you had to do was take the subways! (oh yea, I have grown VERY fond of subway systems, maybe ill start going into NYC more often now.. hehe) But yea, so we took the train to Disney and had a really fun day going on the rides. It was so nice being able to just relax and have fun, especially with people I did not know! After leaving Disney, I rushed back to the ship to meet up with my group for Beijing. We all got our stuff and left the ship, to meet up with it in Qingdao.

The last night in Hong Kong we stayed at a hostel, this was my very first hostel experience, and thankfully it was a good one! We had private rooms that we all shared. That night, we all went to the night market and out to dinner. Then my friend Deb went to visit a friend of hers from high school and I decided to join her. It was a fun night because we got to hang out with students from America and other parts of the world whom were studying abroad in Hong Kong. The next day in Hong Kong we made our way to the train station to take the 24-hour train from Hong Kong to Beijing.

When I first got on the train I thought that it was going to be an awful experience, but surprisingly enough I loved every minute of it! It was so awesome being able to just do nothing for a whole day. I was able to catch up on my sleep (yes I slept for 18 hours) and I was able to just play cards all day. We ate on the train and had a lovely time. Upon arriving in Beijing, we made our way to our hostel. This time, we had 2 private rooms (a double and a triple) and the normal dorm-style rooms. Being that our group consisted of 5 girls and 7 boys, the person who booked the hostel had the girls stay in the private rooms and the boys all stayed in the other rooms. Our hostel was located in such a great area, we were 5 minutes walking distance from Tiananmen Square and also located on an alley street with a market and a lot of excellent restaurants.

The second day we were in Beijing we traveled to the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall with a private tour guide and private bus. The temple was really cool, and relaxing. It was cool because the whole time we were there, there were dance classes and tai chi classes being taught. Also, many people were playing hacky-sac and bad mitten. After the temple we went to the Forbidden City in which we were able to just walk around. The second time I became speechless while in China was while climbing on the Great Wall. This was an experience that again I will never forget, and again pictures will never describe (Jeff when I get home we will compare Great Wall stories). But yea so China was great.

After seeing everything in Beijing we slept a second night in the hostel and then took a plane to Qingdao in the morning. Qingdao is a place I will NEVER go back too, there is just nothing to do there! But I am sure after the Olympics in 2008 Qingdao will be an attraction because all of the aquatic sports are being held there. That is all for China, since I am on the bullet train I am going to try and sleep. I will see everyone in less than a month!!!!

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This is the first time I am writing a journal entry while still in a country. Right now I am in Vietnam, on a bus, headed to the Mekong Delta. (granted I am posting this way after Vietnam… sorry!!)

It is crazy to believe that I am here. Looking out the windows of the bus, you would not believe the sights I am seeing. First off, Vietnam is what I would call motorcycle heaven. No one in Vietnam owns a car, instead the family vehicle is a motorcycle. Literally, a family of 4 piles onto a motorcycle and that is how they ravel. As for public transportation, there are taxis, but the most convenient way to travel is by giving a motorcycle river an address a for a dollar he will take you there. So basically, I have been traveling on motorcycles the whole time I have been here. It is always fun when traveling with friends because you all give the driver the same address and just pray that you all end up in the same place.

So anyways, I really had absolutely nothing planned for Vietnam. The first day, I went to the War Remnants Museum. This was a tough thing to get through, Many of the images taken of the Vietnam War are extremely gruesome, showing the soldiers blown to pieces as well as the many people whom had birth defects due to the chemicals used by the American side. It was extremely hard to look at the images, and they are definitely ones that will forever be engraved in my mind.

After the museum, I met up with my friends at the ship and we decided to go out to diner. We went to this place called Blue Ginger and for the equivalent of $3.50 USD we were each able to have an appetizer, entre, and a drink. The spring rolls here are really good, in fact I have not had any food that I have not liked yet! But anyways, the exchange rate amazes me! And what amazes me more is how cheap myself and my friends have become, for instance in the markets it is not uncommon for my friends and I to bargain over a dollar with the people trying to sell us their goods.

The second and third day I stayed in Ho Chi Minh City. The population of this city is 8 million people and basically one of the only things to do is shop. So for about a day and a half I have gone to the markets and spent way to much money. Also, what is amazing about the markets is that a majority of the items are fakes of designer brands, for the most part the fakes are pretty good but in some cases you get screwed over. For instance, I bought a pair of Gucci sunglasses, but after I got back to the ship I realized that the Gucci word was upside-down. I also bought a pair of Abercrombie and Fitch pants, to realize later on that the “fitch” was spelt without a C. But that’s alright, because they are really comfortable. Another thing I bought at the market was 2 pairs of Puma sneakers and a pair of Puma flip-flops, unfortunately I need to invest in some insoles for the sneakers, but other than that it looks like they will hold up!!

Also on the second day, I went to a disabled children’s school and got a chance to hang out with the children. At this school, there were 54 students, 14 of whom were deaf. Unfortunately I did not remember any of my sign language, because believe it or not, the deaf students in Vietnam were taught to speak with American Sign Language (ASL). Although I could not communicate with the students, I did play volleyball with one of the little boys for about a half hour. Towards the end he and I were doing headers with the blow up beach ball we were playing with.

On Wednesday night, I went to see Global Nomads again. I did this in Brazil as well. Basically Global Nomads is an organization that through video-conferencing connects schools around the world with schools back in the states. Then during the conferences different issues on discussed, sometimes it is religion and other times world issues. The conference in Vietnam was about the difference in culture. At the one in Vietnam, the SAS students were allowed to participate, we actually got to hang out with the Vietnamese students, and what was interesting was how fluent in English they were, and also how knowledgeable they were. Many of these students (between the ages of 14 and 18) were very up to date on current issues as well as history. They were a joy to hang out with, and in fact one of the students I met has emailed me!

Now for the Mekong Delta… Originally I had planned to travel here independently, but in the end I signed up for the SAS trip because it was easier. The trip involved a 2 hour bus ride. Once getting off the bus, we got on boats and traveled through the many canals. Was amazing just being on the water, in a tiny canoe. For the first time I really felt as though I was in the culture! It was awesome! While on the Mekong Delta we had a traditional Vietnamese meal, complete with a whole fried fish, spring roles, fried rice, and soup. The food in Vietnam is s great, and has been my first touch of Asian cuisine, I can not wait for China and Japan!! Sorry about the length, but I know you all love reading these things!!!

Port Louis, Mauritius

Thursday-Saturday, March 15-17, 2007

*sorry this is out of order, but I thought I had finished this entry and then when I went to post this and two others I realized that I actually had not finished writing this. So yea, I was in Mauritius before India.

Well, Mauritius was an interesting port. First off, we ended up have a very rocky time on the way to Mauritius due to a storm in the waters we were traveling. In order to avoid going through the stormy weather directly, the ship was forced to take a longer route to the island of Mauritius and we ended up getting to the island about half a day later than we originally thought we would. When arriving at the island, my friends and I went out into the town of Port Louis to start exploring. We walked around the many shops near the port and then headed back to the ship. Once back at the ship, we got a taxi and made our way to Flic en Flac, which we thought was "the place to be" in Mauritius. Basically, this port of call was the spring break of our trip. There really is not anything to do in Mauritius except for drink and stay at the beach or your villa. Luckily, I was able to avoid this part of Mauritius for the most part.

While in Flic en Flac, we rented a house for a very cheap price. The house was beyond gorgeous. It had 4 bedrooms, which could house the 12 of us comfortably (we all got beds), two bathrooms, a kitchen, outside bar/grill and a patio. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of the house. Anyways, the first night we were at the house we all hung out, had a BBQ, played cards and relaxed. The second day I was in Mauritius I went on a service visit to a school called Terra de Paix. This school was interesting; it was set up as an alternative school for children from broken families whom had behavioral issues. Many of the students at this school attended it because they had gotten kicked out of the public schools. I was lucky enough to sit in on music classes and even get to participate with the students.

Anyways, after the school I headed back to the villa for the second night in Mauritius. The night started out fine, we all went out to dinner and I got my dinner for free because the waiter forgot to put it in originally. Then we all went to a bar with the rest of the semester at students. After the bar, one of my housemates ran at us telling us that our house had been robbed. Immediately, my housemates and I sprinted back to the house to find out that in fact our house had been robbed and that majority of our stuff was taken. Thankfully, I had my stuff locked up and so none of my stuff was taken. The moral of this story, make sure you lock up your valuables and trust no one, or nothing. The people whom robbed our house broke in through a doorway that we could not even open with our key. Also, the door was guarded by a rod iron gate with a pad lock. The robbers bent the gate up and crawled under it. In the end, everyone was safe and that is all that mattered. So yea, Mauritius was a learning experience, and I can say I probably will never be going back there.

The picture at the top is a picture of a teacher and stuent at the school i went to visit.

Penang, Malaysia

Monday-Thursday, April 2-5, 2007

Malaysia is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. When thinking beautiful, all of you probably think of Paradise Islands, and the Bahamas. But by beautiful, I mean the culture, the people, and the scenery. Malaysia, as an altogether whole was beyond gorgeous.

The first day we were in Malaysia I stayed in Penang. We went to a Buddhist temple and walked around. Buddhist temples may be my new favorite place to relax. The whole atmosphere was relaxing. The artwork in the temples is something that I can not describe, and while I have no yet looked through my pictures I just hope they captured even half of what I saw while in the temple. There was this golden Buddha in one of the rooms. When entering the room, it was required to take off your shoes. I literally spent upwards of about a half hour in this room just gazing up at the Buddha. I was amazing that such a large figure could stand so tall and that people would come in and just bow in front of it. Locals came into the temple periodically to offer giving's to the Buddha. They would just get one their knees and pray silently, not even caring that myself and my friends, the tourists, were in their temple taking pictures. I hope to go to another temple while in another country, but I do not know if time will permit, being that I currently have no plans in any other country except for Hong Kong and China.

Before going to the temple, my friends and I went to the local mall, which puts the Palisades Mall to shame! This mall was HUGE and contained every store you could think of in it. It is actually funny that while in all these other countries we can find basically anything that we need. But yea, so we went to the mall to walk around and get some food. We ended up at a Asian cuisine restaurant. It was a buffet, but not like any buffet that any of you would expect. Instead, the buffet contained raw chicken, meat, and fish. We were responsible for grabbing raw food and then going back to our table and cooking it on this grill-type mechanism. We had broth in the middle of the grill that we had to add vegetables to in order to make it taste better. The experience was great, and it was definitely another great meal in another country. I honestly have not had any food on this trip that I have no liked, everything is just amazing. Thank god I am not a picky eater, because a bunch of my friends have had problems finding food to eat.

The second day in Malaysia, we woke up early and took a 30 min flight from Penang to the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. This city is one of the most magnificent things I have seen up to this part of the trip. It's funny, because up until this time I kept saying that Brazil and India were my two favorite ports with South Africa Right behind them. But I think that Malaysia is beating our both South Africa and India. Anyways, so we took a plane to Kuala Lumpur, then myself, and my friends Dan, Slava, and Greg, made our way to the hotel that we were staying at. We booked two rooms at a five star resort called Sunway Lagoon, and we stayed at the 4-star hotel at this resort. Later that night, 4 of our friends, Kyle, Sashia, Katie, and Natalie joined us at the hotel.

The hotel came equipped with a small city, a huge shopping mall, a water park (which was of the worst water parks I have ever been to), an adventure park (containing a rollercoaster), and an extreme park (containing ATVs, Go-Karts, and Paintballing). The complex was also located about 20 minutes outside of the city Kuala Lumpur. The first day we were there, we hung out in the hotel area, because it was basically a city in itself, then the second day we ventured out to Kuala Lumpur. When arriving in Kuala Lumpur, we first went to the PETRONAS Tower so that we could go up to the sky bridge and view the whole city of KL. The view from the sky bridge was beyond amazing. Also, while in KL we went to the Batu Caves. This was really cool, to get to the cave we first had to climb up 292 stairs. While on the stairs, there were a lot of wild monkeys, and while they were very cute, they were also thieves. At one point, a monkey stole a plastic bag out of the a local's hand. Upon taking the bag, the monkey ripped it open and out poured fruit and money. A stupid girl from SAS (yes, majority of the girls say stupid things) looked at me and asked, in all seriously, "I don't understand, why did the monkey steal the money? It's not like he can do anything with it!" I immediately looked at the girl and asked her "well maybe, did you consider, that the monkey smelled the fresh fruit that was in the bag?" I swear, some people are just stupid. But yea, anyways, the caves were really cool. It was basically a place in which offerings were offered to the various Gods of worship.

But yea, so that's basically it for Malaysia, off to Vietnam in three days. It is completely crazy! In just the month of April, I am going to be in Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Qingdao, and Japan… can anyone beat me? Haha miss you all!

Chennai, India

Sunday-Thursday, March 25-29, 2007

India was amazing; I think the two countries I want to go back to most are Brazil and India. I loved every minute of it, and it was not as gross or hot as we thought it would be. Yes, the city was dirty, and parts of it smelled really bad, and there were people who were almost dead laying on the side of the road, but it really was amazing. I spent the first day at the YMCA boys club. It was set up for boys ages 5-16 whom were from broken families, or single-parent families whom could not support their children. The boys at the club were so cute, and nice, and happy to see us. They sang us songs, asked us questions like "what fruits are popular in the states" or "what are we studying" or "what is our hobby". One of the boys asked how we were all affected by the attacks of 9/11. The boys were all so educated despite the conditions they were in. After the question and answer period we were able to play with the boys for about 1-2 hours. I ended up playing thumb wars, and then we went outside and one of the boys did a handstand, so I did one to but with some turns and then he had me show the other boys. Needless to say, I ended up spotting a bunch of the boys to do back-bend kick-overs. At the end of the day my shoulders were sore, but it was worth it to see the smiles on their faces when they landed on their feet.

The next day I woke up with pink-eye, so I went to the doctor and got eye drops, and he also listened to my chest and told me to make sure I used my inhaler, even though it probably wouldn't do much because the air in India is so contaminated; studies have actually shown that spending a day in the air in India is the equivalent to smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day. So yea, for those of you that I spoke to on the phone while I was in India, that is why I was coughing so badly. Anyways, I started my homestay the second day. I ended up staying with a 23 year old girl named Rabbeqa (pronounced like Rebecca). She took us shopping and we had an amazing Indian food dinner. Indian food in India is somewhat like Indian food in America, however they do things much differently. They use more spices, and they eat with their hands. It was actually a lot of fun pouring sauce on my rice and playing with it. Every meal in India revolves around rice, which is the food that their culture has been formed off of. To eat the rice without a fork and knife, you pour a lot of sauce on it. Then you mush it around (using only your right hand because the left hand is seen as unclean) until in for a paste-like substance. Then, you ball up the rice and sauce mixture and eat it. It was AMAZING! I love Indian food!!! But yea so I had home cooked Indian food for two nights, which was beyond amazing. The rest of the days in India I spent with my homestay sister. It was an amazing experience and I was lucky enough to experience a new way of life. For instance, my Indian family had servants. While the servants live with them and are paid, they are treated like complete crap! They must sleep on the floor, with no blanket or pillow, and at any time of day they are required to do what is asked of them. What shocked me the most about this was Rabbeqa's views about her servants. At one point we stopped by the house to pick up some blankets that we could use at the apartment and before we left we had to wait for some food for the servant. Now to me, this made sense, the servant's have to eat. But Rabbeqa had other views; I believe her exact words were "this is ridiculous! I can't believe that we have to wait for food for the servant! I mean really, its bad enough we have to worry about ourselves, and we have to feed them too!" when she said this I was speechless, I never thought that it was possible for a well educated person to think this way about other people. But I guess that is their culture, and that is how she was raised.

Anyways, so yea obviously India was amazing! I met such awesome people, and I have their emails so I can keep in touch with them. I am definitely going to go back to India one day, especially because I want to go up north and see the Taj Mahal. So yea that was India! Miss you! Happy Passover!!

Cape Town, South Africa

Friday-Thursday, March 2-8, 2007

I am actually going to be in Mauritius tomorrow, but I have not had any time to type up any blog entries for South Africa and the time it took to get to South Africa. The main reason for this is because I have been so busy with other things, such as school work. It is ridiculous at the amount of work I have to do one this ship. I do not think I have every done more work for school. But anyways, here is it:

Cape Town, South Africa- surprisingly enough, it is extremely globalized. It reminded a lot of my friends from California of San Francisco. We ended up docking at the waterfront, which was actually an upgrade from where we were originally supposed to dock. At the waterfront was a huge mall, that had basically every store we have in the states, as well as other stores that we do not have in the states. Then there were little restaurants that were directly on the water. It was a cute little touristy town. So the first day I just walked around with my friends, we did some shopping but nothing to extravagant. Then my friends and I went to the District Six Museum and were able to visit a township. Not unfortunately, my tour guide sucked, and did not allow any of us to get off the bus in the township. Due to this we really did not get to experience how the individuals in the townships actually live.

The next day it rained, so two of my friends and I hired a driver to take us to the winelands. The winelands were really pretty, it was really interesting because the roads were in the middle of the vines of grapes. We were lucky enough to get to eat some of the grapes directly from the vine, and they were beyond delicious; extremely sweet. Anyways, we were supposed to go to 3 wineries to have some wine tasting, but the first two we went to were closed. The third winery was really pretty. The main house that we were able to taste in was made of stone and it had very high ceilings. Since we did not get to taste wine at the first two wineries, our taxi driver got us a double tasting at the third one. We tasted 10 different wines, for the most part they were pretty good, but myself and my friends really enjoyed the Shiraz, so we bought a bottle of it to drink on the way home. That night I ended up going out to dinner with a group of 12 people. It was a 5 hour long dinner, with belly dancers and all. It was a lot of fun!

Finally, on Sunday, it was time to leave for my safari! It was amazing! If anyone wants to see the place I stayed, which was basically a honeymoon suite, you can search for Thornybush Game Reserve on the internet, and I stayed in the Thornybush Main Lodge. But anyways, the flight to the game reserve was interesting. First off, flying in another country was extremely easy. We got to the airport, and did not even have to meet with any officials before we got our tickets. Then when boarding the plane we walked outside onto the black top and literally climbed stairs onto the plane. After a two hour plane ride we were in Johanesburg, and then we had to get on a coach bus for a 6 hour bus ride. Once arriving at the game reserve we realized how much fun it was going to be. For the next 3 days, we rode around on 4x4 Land Rovers with no tops looking for safari animals. I was lucky and was able to see everything except for leopards. I have amazing pictures that I will show to anyone who wants to see it when I get back.

Days at Sea—From Salvador, Brazil to Cape Town, South Africa

So I am an idiot, and I am writing about what I did on the way to South Africa while I am in Mauritius. And being that I am writing this 2 weeks after the fact, I am going to miss a lot of detail. But basically, the main thing is that I have no hair! Okay, so to explain now: Neptune Day is the day that you cross the equator. Tradition on this day is to have fish guts poured over you, jump into a pool, kiss two dead fish on the lips, kiss the ring of King Neptune, and finally, shave your head. Our Captain on the ship dressed up as King Neptune. I took part in all of the activities. Now it may shock you all that I shaved my head, but here were my reasons. All of my hair was donated to the charity “Locks of Love” and my hair is going to be made into a wig for a child who had cancer whom can no longer grow their own hair. So yea, I no longer have curls, but I have very short hair. According to a lot of people on the ship, I look better without hair. I really like it! But yea, so that’s the big news about my trip to South Africa. Oh, and by the way, there were 35 other females whom also shaved their heads and donated their hair to this amazing charity! Miss you all!