Erin's Travel Blog

Sorry guys. I am super behind in posting. But I've been kinda busy. After Vietnam I had two days on the ship to catch up on reading, write some papers and plan my travels in China. Then after China it was the same thing, except planning for Japan. After Japan things got crazy. The way the semester is structured here on the ship causes most of the assignments to be due after we've hit all the countries. They want us to compare and contrast and such. I had to write, hmm, seven papers before we got to Hawaii as well as keep up on my readings. The day after Hawaii I had to give two presentations. So there's been little time to report my experiences in Vietnam, China and Japan. But do not fear! Finals start tomorrow; I'll get it done after that.

Day 64 I had a flight early this morning for my trip to Nha Trang peninsula. The drive from the airport from the hotel was the most beautiful I've ever seen. Even prettier than Pacific Coast Highway to Pepperdine. You could see all the fishing boats out in the water. The sun was rising over islands in the background. Picture perfect. I couldn't ruin it by taking a picture. Plus I was on the wrong side of the bus. At the hotel they greeted us with coconut milk drinks. They were much tastier than my first and only other coconut. From there we went to go see Husband Rock. It is the biggest rock on the peninsula, I guess. The story behind it is that a fisherman got caught out in a storm with big waves. His wife went out to save him, and they both got washed up on shore. Kinda sad, but romantic. The usual stuff. From there we visited a Hindu temple to Shiva and the Devi goddess. It was from the time when Hinduism had just developed out of woodland folklore. It was also very influen

Day 63 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Good Morning Vietnam! We're here! This morning I am going on a trip to visit a school for deaf children and a disabled children's orphanage. Getting off the boat was an ordeal because there are lots of parents visiting here, and we were trying to get off as they were boarding. There was a welcoming crew on the dock as we walked down the gangway. Several Vietnamese women dressed in traditional clothing were standing holding a sign that said, “Semester at Sea Welcome to Vietnam!” I like when they do things like that. I climbed on the bus and we were on our way. The traffic was pretty bad because it was Monday morning rush hour. Everyone was on their motorcycle. The diplomats said that there are 810 million people in Vietnam and there are 800 million motorcycles. Crossing the street to the school was also a challenge. You have to cross slowly and deliberately. The cars and motorcycles don't stop for you, they flow around you, “like a stream th

Day 59 Our mission today was to find the Sunday Market. It happens on the last Sunday of every month. We had a lot of trouble finding someone who knew about it. After Starbucks we decided to give up on it for a little while and try to go on a tour of the Blue Mansion. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived there we were too late for the 1100 tour. We would have to wait until the 1500 one. There were some artists sitting acts the street sketching the beautiful building. I wanted to go see what their drawings looked like. We admired them for a few minutes and talked to the artists. They said they knew all about the Sunday Market. It was just around the corner! So our luck had changed and we walked on over. The market reminded me of a small-scale Mayfest. It only took up one wide, but short street. There was all different kinds of art and handicrafts for sale. After walking around for about an hour we had seen everything. We were hungry too. We headed over to SOHO for lunch and the free

Day 58 Kelsey and I met king Kenny outside Towné House hotel in the morning. We had to go to the dock to pick up Kelly. She left last night after we all got into a fight. Luckily, I'm pretty good at not being awkward. We decided coffee was a must before we went to the beach. Kenny obliged. He is the greatest. The drive to Batu Feringgi took about half an hour, and it was gorgeous. The road was so windey, like Old North Road in Sand Springs. (The hilly one that Nat hates, but Kalen and I love.) There were tropical plants and trees lining one side and sparkling water on the other. We passed some huge condominiums as well as some shabby-looking ones. Kenny explained to me that the Malay people lived in the run-down flats, while rich people, usually europeans, lived in the expensive condos. He said it was because the Malay had become lazy and didn't work to earn enough money to live somewhere else. There was a law in Malaysia which gave the Malay an allowance to take out loans an

Day 57 There is a monsoon happening outside the window of our hotel right now. Literally buckets of water. Kelly, Kelsey and I just barely made it inside before it really started coming down. We also narrowly avoided our imminent death. Last night we slept on the boat. Tonight we had made reservations at the Towné House Hotel. But it was a dump. It reminded me of Trainspotting. At first, we thought it would be okay because we were just going to be sleeping there. We left our overnight stuff there in the morning and went about our day. But when we came back, we realized that it just wasn't going to work. It smelled like my basement. There were red curtains that made it look like a prostitute house. The toilet did not flush. The shower did not have a curtain. Everything about it was sketch. I'm sure someone was killed there at some point. We quickly went back over to the Hotel Continental to ask if they had any rooms available. They only had a room for tonight, but we wanted to

Day 56 This morning we woke up and headed over to the pier because we were signed up for the Religions of Malaysia tour. Daniel and Debra were also on the trip. They told me some stories and showed me some pictures from my birthday. Josie had stepped in human poop. It seems that someone was too blotto to find the toilet, so they took a dump on the floor. And unsuspecting Josie had stepped in it. Gross. Our first stop was at Kek Lok Si temple. I don't know much about it because our guide was below par, but it is a buddhist temple. It was really beautiful with several different shrines to the different buddha incarnations. The base of the temple had a small pool that was filled with hundreds of turtles. They were all over the place. So many turtles. They should sell those suckers to a pet shop or something. For some reason, religious centers are also commercial spaces, and the stairs to the temple were lined with souvenir shops. The shop keeps are constantly calling to you with,

Day 55 We had to tender off the boat in Malaysia. Tendering is a pretty complex process. First, they were only allowing people on morning SAS trips off the ship. So Josie, Kelly and I headed down to get a tender ticket at what we thought was a reasonable time: 0930. Kelsey was on a SAS trip. I asked if non-SAS trip people were being allowed off the ship yet, and the lady said yes and gave me a ticket. When the letter on our ticket was called, we went downstairs to load into the tender boat. At the exact same time, Bob Frank came over the PA system and said that the ship had not been cleared by customs, and no one was allowed off the ship unless they were on an SAS trip. So we had to wait. We waited for a long time down there on deck 2. I don't understand why she gave out tickets to people if they weren't allowed to get off the ship yet. It was annoying. Finally, they said we could go. So we swiped our cards and went down some stairs to a platform where a small boat was floati

Day 51 Chennai, India Kelly and I woke up early one last time; it was the last day in India. :( We wanted to be off the boat early and back on the boat early to avoid the lines. We also decided to wear our saris The staff loved it at breakfast. They served us like queens, asking if we wanted more juice, coffee, cereal, anything. It was wonderful. As soon as we got off the boat it was a different story. The Indians just stared at us as we walked to the gate. That is not the reaction we had anticipated. We grabbed a rickshaw and told him to take us to Pondi Bazaar. Surprisingly, he did. Not surprisingly, he took us to his friend's shop. They were really nice though. They opened up the shop early just for us. They helped us try on several different things before we found the perfect ones. Unfortunately, as we were leaving the monsoon rain started. It was pouring. The shopkeeper was so shocked that we didn't have umbrellas, and he offered to let us borrow his. We knew that

Day 50 Somehow we all woke up at 0430 for our wake-up call, although several people were passed out on the bus all morning. We left the hotel to head back to the Ganges to watch the morning bathing ritual. Guess who was there to greet me as I stepped off the bus. The same boy from last night. He was still trying to sell me bindis. He wanted Kelly and I to buy a whole sheet of them. Each sheet had about 20 cards, each with six or seven bindis on them. We told him we would buy maybe one or two cards, but there was no way we would get an entire sheet. What would we do with that? He wouldn't sell the cards separately, though. He said he had to buy the whole thing as one, and that's how he sold it. Plus, he wanted $20 for it! We told him sorry, we weren't going to buy that much. I felt bad because he had been so helpful the night before, and we wanted to repay him somehow. We just weren't going to pay even 200 rupees for something we didn't want. So we climbed i

Day 49 Our wake up call came at 0600 this morning. We had to be packed up and eating breakfast downstairs at 0630. We left at 0715 for a tour of Delhi. We drove past the Birla Temple, which was the first Hindu temple to allow untouchables inside. Next we saw a Sikh Gurdwara, then past the war memorial, parliament house, secretariat buildings and the official residence of the president of India. Then we had to drive to the airport for our flight to Varanasi. Once in Varanasi, we went straight to the Hotel Radisson and had a great lunch there. The waiters were wearing jump suits, which threw me off a little bit. I was glad to be able to relax and enjoy a leisurely lunch followed by tea before we left to see some Buddhist temples. The first one was in Sarnath, an ancient city. We visited a new Buddhist temple first. It had amazing paintings of the Buddha's life on all the walls. In the front was a big golden shrine of the Buddha. Prayer flags hung from trees and fences outside t

Day 48 A wake up call came at 0415. It felt like we had just fallen asleep a minute ago. We were ready to go and down on the bus by 0445. The box breakfasts the hotel provided did not live up to my expectations. It had a croissant, toast, a muffin, a banana, an apple and a strange curry patty. There was jam and orange juice. That may all sound good, but the curry patty was less than tasty, we couldn't eat the apple because it was washed in tap water, and the toast was soggy. The drinks in India are also strange. They like this lime water, which you would think tastes like water with lime, but really it tastes like margarita mix. It's salty, not refreshing. The orange juice is also salty. I can't explain it. From the hotel we went to the train station. We were taking a train to Agra to see Fatehpur Sikri, Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal. On the way to the station, I saw people sleeping outside on the ground or sidewalk. There weren't just a few; there was one at least every

Day 47 We arrived in India this morning. It was just like Christmas for me because I woke up early and couldn't sleep. Or that could be contributed to the boat vibrating. When we're slowing down, the whole ship vibrates because of the engines, which in turn makes a lot of noise too. But I was still very excited to be in India. This is the country that I was looking forward to most. And now we're here! I always pictured India as a place where I would love to visit, but wasn't sure I'd ever find a reason or a chance. (Well, I guess I thought the same way about all of these places.) After my Hinduism class I especially wanted to go and see all the rituals in action in the place where they began. We were the first ones off the boat this morning. We wanted to get out early so we could fit some stuff in before Kelly and I had to leave for our Taj Mahal/Varanasi trip. We had to walk through an industrial area (not a shock) to a busy street and along the busy street t

Day 38 I have made a fatal error. I missed the deadline to study abroad in Madrid for the spring. I was so sure it was October 15. No, wrong. It was September 15. What am I going to do? My heart is broken. Yesterday, I was thrilled to have finished the required essays and used the rest of my internet rations for the semester to upload them. I was engrossed in the view of the eastern South African shore with its enticing green and foreboding mountains and mysterious fog and crashing waves. There were rumors of whales swimming alongside the boat. But all that is sour now. Why didn't I check, check and check again the deadline before I left?! I made sure to call my advisor and ask him what I needed to do. I faxed the appropriate forms to him. Why didn't I just fill out the application sooner and get it over with? Oh, maybe because I was too busy trying to get my yellow fever vaccination, malaria pills, chinese, indian and brazilian visas and figuring out what to pack for the

Day 35 I made it to the meeting on time. 0400, remember. They piled about 30 of us into vans to go to the airport. I've never seen an airport so disorganized. The line for security went from one end of the airport to the other, and the check-in line was parallel to it in the reverse direction. We all sat in a spot on the floor because there were no chairs and waited for the travel agent to return with our boarding passes. The decorations in the airport cracked me up because they were all Native American theme, with buffalos and tepees. The gates were actually just desks spaced evenly in a big tent. We had to take a bus to get to the plane. It was the same at the Johannesburg airport. These aren't small airports, either. It was weird. So, the change of plans had been that we would take two flights instead of a flight and a long drive. At the tiny airport in the middle of the bush, we clambered into two different vans to be transported to the Manyeleti Game Reserve. Even on

Day 31 Kelly and I were supposed to meet Kelsey and her dad, Larry, early the next day to go shark cage diving. We were going to try the coffee place that Trevor had recommended, Mugg & Bean. So, we woke up early, got ready to go and made our way to the mall to find the place. Everything was deserted. We went into the section where Mugg & Bean should have been according to the mall map, but couldn't find it. A security guard told us it was all the way at the opposite end of the mall, and it was closed. Wouldn't open until 0900. What kind of a coffee place doesn't open until 0900?!? We had no idea what to do. Every other place was closed; it would take too long to get back on the boat for their nasty breakfast. Thankfully we were docked right in front of a hotel, and we went to breakfast there. The staff was so nice. They brought us boxes and to-go cups. We got to look at their entire buffet, all of which looked great, but we could only take finger foods. And i

Day 30 Kelly and I had made plans to go paragliding this morning. We got up early and waited off the boat at 9:30 for our guide, Manu. He arrived a little late–late enough to make us nervous–because he couldn't find the pier. Nevertheless, we were out on the road by 1000. Manu made all kinds of jokes about safety on our way to meet our other guide, Pete. We had to change plans because the winds off of Table Mountain were no good, so we drove to some other ridge about an hour away. The winds weren't ideal there either; they could have been stronger. But other paragliders were out. We pulled off the highway into a parking lot, which boasted a sign prohibiting the feeding of baboons. Manu said they will get ya and pull your hair if you have food. We decided to use a different launch pad than the one right off the parking lot. Getting to the launch pad required crossing the highway and a bit of a hike up a ridge. It was welcome exercise for me. My stomach grew more and more