Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Sleeping on the Great wall $809; Japanese railpass $292; Disney Sea ticket $56... Passing out for half an hour in a crouded McDonalds in Tokyo... Priceless

Wow, So I have some catching up to do. I’ve been to Vietnam, China, Japan and Hawaii since I last updated. Sorry about that guys! And because I know you guys don’t really want to read a novel I will just try to do some highlights of each trip. This way you can just ask me about specifics when I see you next!

Some interesting facts first: I have 2 weeks to the day left until I am home in Colorado. I hope you all understand that the first thing I do when I see you is not to speak  but to give you a big hug. I mean, I might squeal or yell but it will be stifled by my hug. Just… beware. :D  Next, and on a slightly less optimistic note, the riots between the Red and Yellow shirts parties in Thailand are happening at the exact places that I was staying and hanging out. There was a particularly large riot/demonstration in front of the Central Mall. I was in that mall for several hours on the second to the last day. It was a pretty big shock when I first heard about it. Apparently the next voyage is not going there due to the unrest—which is a bummer because I really liked Thailand. And lastly, for all of you that don’t know I passed the international date line (experiencing 2 Easters) and am now BEHIND you’re time, not in front. I went from being almost an entire day ahead of you to about 7 hours behind. As of today (which will change tonight as we roll back the clocks an hour) I am 3 hours behind Colorado and 2 hours behind California. Yay! Then I will end ahead of you again. Crazy. I’ve traveled the world. Gah.
Vietnam: Mostly spent in the port city of Ho Chi Minh. I did a lot of market shopping, I got a pedicure, a dress and shirt tailor made and I got my brother a tailored suit. (He’s going to look amazing in it, I feel like I did a pretty good job with it). Other days I went to visit the Mekong Delta, a 2 hour bus ride to the west of Ho Chi Minh. There I rode several canoes around a series of river islands. We ate fresh coconut candy, drank water out of young coconuts (its water before it turns into coconut milk in a mature fruit), and we visited a local village where we tried fruit and listened to traditional music. It was a hot, but very relaxing day. We spent a good majority of it on a boat, which you would assume would bother me but the boats were small and traditional so it was nothing like being on the Explorer.  I also bought a sweet traditional cone hat. I think you’ll all like it.  The next day I went to the famous Cu Chi Tunnels. We toured a section of the tunnels that served as homes and underground transportation for the viet cong forces during the Vietnam War. The tunnels themselves were small but many of them had been widened for western tourists. Our guide told us that if we wanted to we could go down to the third level of the tunnels which were much smaller, not widened and very dark. They were made for “Spring Rolls” (the Vietnamese) and not “Hamburgers” (westerners). That made us laugh but then double-think about how the world sees us. Not that the Vietnamese aren’t smaller in stature than the typical Westerner/European/African but still…. It was a little awkward.  We also ate tapioca root there, which with a little crunched peanut and sugar was their main source of food during the war. My friend Erin and I walked to the War Memorial museum one morning. It was incredibly moving and there were pictures of some of the most horrendous things. I can’t even imagine what it was like for both sides. There was one particular image that struck me (and honestly made me a little nauseous and thankful for the bad quality of the photograph) of a US soldier holding up the shreds of a Vietcong fighter who had been blown to pieces by a grenade. The chunk of human that the man held contained part of the head, an arm and strips of the torso. It was… hard to imagine living a life where the expression on the US soldier’s face could come to be the emotionless one he wore. Even looking at that poorly exposed photograph my heart was racing and I was stopped short, the grimace of acceptance that that soldier carried was not possible for me. There was another set of pictures taken of a Vietnamese prisoner being pushed out of a helicopter. This progression was one that struck my friend Erin the most. The thing about the Vietnamese though is that they still love Americans. We are welcomed, many people were happy that we were there and there was an entire section of the museum dedicated to pictures that school children had drawn, painted and colored about world peace, happiness and acceptance between countries. The colors of these were fascinating, bright, optimistic and frankly very advanced pieces of art for a bunch of 6-11 year olds. There also was a trip I made to the local zoo with a group of deaf kids from 5-21. Each SAS kid was paired with a deaf child/teen and we walked around the zoo, had lunch and played jump rope. Let me just tell you, I still rock the rope. No questions asked. I also met a deaf kid who dj’s. I think that’s the coolest job description I’ve ever heard. “Heck yeah I’m deaf and DJing, what are you going to do about it?”
China: This trip started out in Beautiful and fast-paced Hong Kong. I met up with Sam Lovetro, Kelly Cave (who is from CLU and is on the ship with me) and her friend Nick who also goes to CLU. The four of us just traveled around the island for the day seeing some famous sites of Hong Kong, ate traditional food (Dim Sung) and not so traditional food (Muslim Chinese food anyone?). We visited an extremely beautiful and peaceful Buddhist temple and garden and then to the boy’s home university. That night was one of the craziest I’ve ever had in my life and if you want to hear all the details you’ll have to ask me later. Just know that the day we got there was the last day of the Rugby 7’s tournament which is a very important worldwide rugby event. There were teams and fans from all over the world staying in Hong Kong and celebrating the end of the tournament. Plus the 700 SAS students who bring a party to any port that we are docked in made a recipe for one crazy Sunday night. The street we went to was called SOHO Street and was entirely lined with bars and clubs. You couldn’t walk down the street without touching a million people in the process or without hearing every popular pop/techno/hip-hop/etc song all fighting for my attention. It was an overstimulation dream… and SO much fun.
The next morning I boarded a plane headed for Beijing in mainland China. The flight was 2ish hours long and we got to experience some good ol’ communist propaganda on the plane telling us how to proceed through customs and immigration. Everything was also done in weird half-anime cartoon characters, even the professional videos done by the airline. Cartoons, every one of them. In Beijing we saw the Bird’s Nest, the Cube (the pool for the Olympics) and the Ming tombs of 13 emperors from the Ming tombs. No worries though, we only toured one. We slept on the great wall that night after hiking up to one of the guard towers to watch the sunset over the mountains and the wall. Stunning! AND Let me just tell you that despite 2 layers of pants, 2 socks, shoes, 2 hats, 4 shirts and a “winter” sleeping bag it is not enough to keep one warm in 0° C weather. Our sleeping bags, which the tour company supplied were good through 2°. Yeah right they were.  But in all honesty I was up by 5am and watching the sun rise over the wall so it was worth it. Vanessa fainted during breakfast but then once she got some apple juice in her she was good to go. The morning was spent hiking along 10 km (6 miles) of the wall that hadn’t been restored. It was such an amazing hike, one of a life-time. I would stop and look up and see the wall stretch along, curving over crests and mountains and then suddenly disappearing into a valley only to emerge like the little Engine-That-Could triumphantly over the next ridge. At the end we had the choice to walk down a pathway to get to this little village where our restaurant was OR… (and the option I chose to do) for the equivalent of seven dollars we could take a zipline down from one of the towers, over a river and to a little dock where a smaller skipper boat took us to the other side of the river where our village was. We. Were. Exhausted. But it was so rewarding. The next day we went to Teinnemen square (where we saw frozen, dead, Mao… I was creeped out) the Forbidden City and the Summer Place. It was all really cool but our group was so tired that it was hard to really appreciate where we were and what we were experiencing. The sleeper train back to Shanghai where the ship was docked was really cool but we were swarmed with the SAS kids that I’m ashamed to be associated with. The ones that turn into alcohol sucking vampires as soon as the sun goes down. Seriously, these kids drink alcohol like it’s their job. Many of them spend the money in one night paying for drinks than I make in a day. Stupid spoiled, drunk rich kids…. Oh well, my group was civilized and for that I was thankful. 
Japan: I would like to just point out that in almost every port we have been to we have missed something cool by a couple days, a week or some other frustratingly short amount of time. But in Japan…. We were right on time. We arrived in peak Cherry blossom season. The little white flowers that are characterized in Japanese art, haiku, literature and lore were out and shinning, just for us, it seemed. I hiked a mountain to hang out with monkeys and on the way up I saw yellow maples, cherry trees, red oaks and tall trees that looked like they belonged in the jungle. I’ve never seen so many colors on one hill before, it was so pretty. Vanessa and I found our way through the rail system to a corner of Kyoto which we felt like was hidden to the rest of Semester at Sea (I ended up going back to the exact same place the next day with a SAS trip but it was mostly spent in the monkey park). We arrived right in time to see the sun set. We followed some rickshaw runners give tours through this old neighborhood and stumbled upon a temple. We started taking pictures of everything we could because suddenly the sunset painted everything with the warm glow of dusk. The rock garden became a moving stream, the tips of the temple fizzled with a halo from the sun and the monks rang a gong and started evening prayers with us there. It was straight out of a novel.
The next leg of our adventure was a bit more exciting because we decided to take a train to an unknown city around Mt. Fuji. We arrived at about midnight having no idea where we were going to stay. We decided that asking some locals would be a good place to start. We found a guy walking out of a Lawson store who looked like he’d know a place for backpackers. He spoke very little English but eventually he got his wife (who was his sober driver) to find us a hotel. We were so thankful. She was the sweetest, prettiest little Japanese woman whose name was Chui. The guy was in a punk band called NiceNice and was your classic rocker with ear gauges and a fedora. He started to offer up his house but Chui didn’t like that idea. The hotel she found us was a little expensive for our taste (84,000 yen or about  86 bucks for the 2 of us). I ended up not having enough money and while at the 7-11 trying to pull out money Vanessa asked the attendants if they knew any places we could sleep for cheap. We had heard from people that you could sleep in comic book stores and karaoke bars so that’s what we asked for. Apparently there was a comic book store where you could sleep for free a few blocks from us. We were stoked. Unfortunately several locals informed us as we were asking for directions that it was closed for the night. BUT, one showed us up some stairs to a karaoke bar where we could sleep. It was $16 bucks each; we got our own room and very own wooden benches to sleep on. Very comfortable. ;) Since we got there after midnight we got free drinks and because we clearly were in need of something the guy gave us free French fries (after asking where we were from. He seemed to think that because we were from the states we would automatically like fries. Good thing he was right!). We went to bed around 3am because we had taken advantage of the free drinks and we had figured out how to work the karaoke machine. I think our peak performance was “Where is the Love” by the Black Eyed Peas. But we also sang some Brittany cause we couldn’t let the Japanese people singing her songs next to us beat us! So much fun… until 5 am rolled around when he closed and we had to leave. We boarded the first rail to a city closer to mt fuji and watched the sunrise through the windows. We didn’t really plan for the fact that nothing would be open in this little town until 9 so we snuck up into the top of a hotel for a couple hours. Vanessa fell asleep sitting up and  I fretted about my inability to withdraw money and my seriously swindling supply. We got some pictures of Mt. Fuji but they were tainted by the large apartment complex directly in front of the hotel. Annoying. Then we took off for Tokyo. That was possibly one of the most exhausting days I’ve had. Constant traveling, waking up at 4:45 after an hour and a half of sleep and then dealing with the craziness of Tokyo caused us to find the only place that we could find to sit without ordering (a Mc Donald’s food bar) and pass out. Literally, Vanessa slept for half an hour on her backpack while sitting at a counter in a McDonald’s in the Shubuai District of Tokyo. I’m pretty sure that’s one of those Priceless stories. After sleeping for about 10 hours we got up and were at DisneySea by 10:10. We spent 12 hours in Disney and never waited longer than 20 minutes in line to ride a ride. I think we got our money’s worth.
9 Days at sea = 2 Easters and a time change from 17 hours ahead of CO to 7 hours behind. The time was needed to slow down.
Hawaii: No skydiving cause I missed the bus but the first day I went snorkeling in Hanoma Bay and saw 4 sea turtles. (One was a baby!) That night was another epic night involving late night swims and short dresses, lost skirts only to discover that I had worn jeans instead and then wondering the streets looking for Heidi who had Vanessa’s ID. We never found her. She did walk by us the next day so that worked out alright. The second day I laid on the beach and tanned. I also bought hair dye in Walmart before getting back on the ship and I am now a “natural” strawberry blond. Many people can’t tell I changed my hair color and some have asked if it was my real natural color so apparently it suits me. I like it and I think I’m going to keep it like this for a while.

Well, that’s all from the ship. Sorry that I just shot gunned that all at you but I think it was pretty necessary. I applaud you if you get through it all.
Happy Earth Day everyone!!

Em

1 comment:

  1. Dude, you didn't do the zipline?! I am totally doing that, although I think I probably will have to seriously convince myself to do it. Em, I am totally freaking out about all of this now...I am can't wait to talk to you when you get back. I talked for an hour after the pre departure dinner with katey wade and steven newman about SAS but ahhh i still have so many more questions, im so amped for this already.

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