Erin's Travel Blog

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...