News from the Boat_Hawaii

Aloha, everybody!

(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

[Didn't think I'd make it, did you? Yeah. Neither did I.]

So… it seems like everybody on the ship just kind of forgot about Hawai’i. I can’t even count the times that, when we were heading for Japan, I heard the words, “This is our last port.” Like Mauritius, Hawaii was just a place where we could recoup, hang out on the beach and not worry about any of that pesky culture business.

Well screw those people. Hawai’i was one of the ports I was most excited to go to, and it was hands down the port I enjoyed the most. Not necessarily my favorite port, but definitely the one I was saddest to leave. It definitely helped that it was warm and sunny, and that the first thing I saw when we got off the ship was a rainbow, but I can barely even begin to describe how much I loved Hawaii.

I probably wrote this on several postcards, but to me, Hawaii feels like it got stuck in the 60s and never moved on. There are roadside drive-ins that sell deep-fried everything, muscle cars that howl by, convenience stores that sell literally everything, and then of course the surfing. And not snazzy short board extravaganza, although I’m sure that’s around too, but good old-fashioned ten-foot long boards that I can barely carry, let alone paddle on. There’s a sleepy who-cares vibe that just permeates everything, surrounded by absolutely gorgeous people, landscape, and wildlife. Even Pearl Harbor, which is in itself pretty gruesome, is fairly easy to take in just because there’s nothing to see. There’s a rusting chimney in the water, and a long, long list of names of people who died, and the horrifying knowledge that somewhere below you, there are bodies that have been imprisoned in a sunken battle ship for almost 70 years. The USS Arizona still leaks oil, actually, and the few veterans that are still alive consider the oil to be the tears of their comrades that are still caught below.

[On a less romantic note, that’s two quart of oil being leaked into the ocean *per day*, and while that may not sound like a whole lot, that’s many, many gallons of water that are being polluted. I’m sorry for the whole soap-box thing, but I don’t think stopping oil from leaking into the very water we depend on to survive is desecrating somebody’s tomb, it’s just plain common sense. I really don’t want to be disrespectful, but I just can’t get over the fact that this is a sunken ship leaking oil into the ocean and people don’t think it should stop.]

But overall, the parts of the memorial that I saw were very subtly done. Nobody was beating you over the head with the fact that people died here, and nobody was holding tirades against the Japanese. It was more of an overall “war is horrible” thing, and we all know how much that appeals to me. But it was still a bit rough, and I was very happy when I managed to hit the beach with a board and just relax for a little bit. Not that, you know, going surfing twice in one day is all that relaxing, but man it was fun. Mind you, the board was pretty much twice my size, and after a while my arms started hurting so badly that I wanted to cry, but there’s just something about sitting on a board in the sunshine with palm trees in the distance that makes me be okay with the world.

So that was O’ahu. A little touristy but surprisingly modern, and with lots of Japanese tourists. Unfortunately we had to miss Santa coming in on a surfboard because we were heading off to Hilo on the Big Island, Hawaii. All I saw of that was the ride to and from the airport. Instead Dan, Chelita, Utsav, Kevin and I hopped into a rental car (that we weren’t supposed to rent) and drove up to the Akaka Falls, 300 feet high, in the middle of lush, gigantic ferns and trees. It was surprising to me how an active volcano could be so *green,* but there are definitely palm trees and grassy hills and plants everywhere.

But you can only look at plants for so long, so we made our way to Kona, where people on the ship had said to go. It was pretty dead. There were a couple of stores and fast food restaurants, and then the ocean, but this was definitely not a happening place. So we asked a store clerk what there was to do, and he shrugs and says, “Jump off the end of the world.” Awkward silence as we all think to ourselves, *Can it really be THAT bad?* and then he laughs and says, “It’s a cliff. The End of the World. You can go jump off a cliff.” Well, after that, we kinda had to do it just for the bragging rights. So he gives us directions, we follow them for a while, and end up at… a turtle beach. You know those sea turtles that you get on post cards of clear blue water and tropical fish? Yeah. Those are actually there, not three feet away from you, completely unfazed by the staring tourists. So. Awesome.

Anyway. Back in the car we go and this time, we actually make it to the End of the World. The cliff is in a field of black volcanic rocks with a pretty distinct post-apocalyptic feel to it, and beyond them there is nothing but ocean. So yeah, it kinda feels like the end of the world. The cliff itself is only about 30-40 feet high, and there were another group of people that had already jumped that offered emotional support, but my friend Dan who went first was still pretty terrified. So, naturally, I jumped in before I could get any more nervous than I already was. In fact, I went so fast that our appointed video and photography people completely missed it. I sort of landed badly and bruised my thigh, and between that and the adrenaline, I was pretty much done, but Dan got very into it. He even went a third time when a group of tourists showed up on a boat and told him to jump again because they’d missed it the first two times around.

It wasn’t until afterwards that we realized that The End of the World is allegedly one of the top ten most dangerous cliffs in the world, and that all the random flower bouquets on the rocks were for people who died…

For the record: I’m fine. My leg looked pretty horrible for a couple of days, but it didn’t really hurt. And I jumped off the end of the world. Beat that.

After that much excitement, it was an early bedtime for us – all the better, because the next day turned out to be a giant rush. We had about three hours of solid driving ahead of us to get back to Hilo, we wanted to hang out at a beach, we wanted to go see the lava river, and we had to have it all done before 6 o’clock. Even earlier, in fact, because Alexa still had to write some postcards and nobody wanted to risk being late getting back to the ship at the very last port. So we booked it to a black sand beach and hung out there for a while, and then we went off to see lava. Hawaiian traffic being what it is, we ended up not making it there until 3.30 or so, so we only stayed for a couple of minutes, but it was definitely worth it. That entire stretch of land literally looks like Hell. Crusted over in black lava, with smoke rising up in the distance, and when you get too close, you can still feel the heat… We didn’t see any new lava, but we saw hardened sections that had only formed in the two weeks since Thanksgiving. And the surprisingly numerous number of houses that people still live in. You can’t ever say that human beings aren’t resourceful.

We somehow made it back to the ship on time, although I think some small part of each of us wishes we hadn’t. Hawaii was just hands-down amazing. I don’t know if I could live there permanently just because it *is* pretty dead, but man, did I love it. Nothing to really worry about, no reason to be stressed out, just cruising along the island with people that I like and the music blaring…

I had a good time.

Lots of love from 31˚ 33.9N/120˚ 30.2W
Alexa

Pictures are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=263376&id=834707681&l=8cbcacd404

News from the Boat_Japan

The first cultural experience we had in Japan was a temperature check. Japan likes to protect itself from diseases, so every person entering the country has to get checked for a fever (by walking past something that looks like a police radar to measure your speed). If your temperature’s too high, that’s just too bad. No entry for you.

I guess that’s Japan for you. A little formal, a lot cautious, but very polite all the time, even when they’re telling you you might not be able to get off the ship.

Luckily I did not qualify as being sick, even though I was feeling pretty horrible, and so was able to go on my very expensive SAS trip to Hiroshima by bullet train. The Shinkansen itself is an experience: clean, orderly, with numbered seats, and it’s moving so fast it kinda feels like you’re not moving at all. It’s a bit like an airplane, in that sense. And it looks like a space shuttle. No joke.

Hiroshima, though, was… not what I expected. I’ve always connected it with chaos and destruction in my mind, but the atom bomb flattened the entire city, so it’s not like you see any of the remaining damage. Aside from one building, the city is brand new. You’d never be able to tell that such a tragedy occurred here if it wasn’t for the occasional statue or the museum. The museum, though, really gets you. Hiroshima calls for the end of all wars, everywhere, and the museum doesn’t pull any punches. Little children’s diary entries, lunchboxes, hair, fingernails… you name it, it’s in the exhibit, and it’s going to make you nauseous. It gives a little historical background, too. And here’s a scary thought for my German readers: The US wasn’t sure what country to bomb at first. The only reason they didn’t choose Germany was because Germany was already going down. Otherwise, ‘Hiroshima’ could have just as easily been ‘Berlin’ or ‘Dresden’ or ‘Hamburg’…

On a side note: One of my professors was on the trip, and he’d just learned that I was German pretty much the day before. So when I was talking to our guide, he came up and asked me what I thought about the museum.

Well. An American, a German, and a Japanese person all discussing World War 2. That was a little awkward.

But anyway. I didn’t really learn anything new. Except that atom bombs melt your fingernails from your hands and that war is terrible, always and under all circumstances. There is no excuse for slaughtering other people. There just isn’t.

That night, Jenn, Alex, Damien and I headed on to Kyoto where we spent the night in a capsule hotel. That’s pretty much a spaceship on the ground, with sleeping pods instead of rooms and shampoo and conditioner in single-use packets. They were originally designed for business men who worked late and had to go back to work early, so going home didn’t make any sense. It was very snazzy, though. They give you everything, even pajamas, and the women have a separate floor, bathroom, lounge and elevator all to themselves. Oh, and lights that turn off and on slowly so waking up isn’t so bad for the system. The only downside was that none of us could figure out the alarm, so we all overslept.

In the morning, we realized that we were only about a thirty-minute walk from the Imperial Palace, so we went and checked that out. It was pretty cool, definitely nice architecture and design, and there was a traditional dance thing going on in the courtyard. Plus, the leaves were all crazy vibrant colors and the air was just that right sort of crisp, cold without being painful. My first real autumn in over three years… I felt right at home. But then the whole of Japan reminded me of Germany, in a way. Maybe it was because Japanese people are fairly introverted and quiet, and aren’t falling all over themselves to interact with strangers like the rest of the world. I don’t know. It just all felt a little familiar.

We checked out the castle before we took off for Tokyo. Between the castle and the palace, the castle definitely wins. It has floors that creak so you can tell when intruders are trying to sneak in. How badass is that? But then we had to take off to catch the Shinkansen and somehow made it, after several hours of trying to decipher symbols and cryptic directions, to our traditional Japanese bed&breakfast. It didn’t have rice paper walls, but beds and a small sitting area all on the floor and a tea set just waiting for us. It was like a Japanese apartment, basically. I would have totally moved in.

So far, so good, right? And that’s when it started to get strange. Jenn wanted to see a Maid Café, a café where the waitresses are all dolled up in French Maid outfits. I figured there’d be one or two, but no, there were dozens. (Cafes, not waitresses.) Granted, most of them were closed because it was ten in the morning on a Sunday, but we did find one. First of all, Jenn and I were the only girls in there for a solid hour. (Then, one other girl showed up with her boyfriend. Hell of a date.) We got charged just for sitting down, and the prices were ridiculous. Alex ordered a special where you got a pancake, a waffle, a drink and a picture with one of the waitresses (taking pictures independently was a huge no-go) for $25. Well, as it turns out, there was some miscommunication there. The special was a pancake OR a waffle and a picture with one of the waitresses for $25. Poor guy still hasn’t lived down the fact that he bought a $25 piece of cake. So, a little overpriced, but okay, ladies in short outfits, I can understand why people would go. Except that the entire room is made up to look like a little girl’s room, with stuffed animals and magic spells that you cast over your food. And then a very random, sort of bad song-and-dance that everybody else found absolutely hilarious. I’m all for being culturally open, but I still have no idea what to think about that, and I spent a solid hour and a half alternately feeling like I should be in a French Maid outfit or feeling like I shouldn’t be there at all.

After that, most of us were ready for some average mediocrity, but Jenn wanted to see more strange things, so we went out to Harajuku station to see girls and guys in crazy outfits. Not that we really found any. Instead we went to a Shinto shrine where we read some pretty great things on the wooden plaques that people write their wishes on. “Good health,” I can get behind, same for “A loving relationship,” but “a good correlation between October sky and my software firm”? At least it’s honest, I guess.
We walked around the shopping mall for a while but didn’t actually buy anything because it was all insanely expensive. But it was nice to know that everything is fashionable *somewhere.*

Of course, that still wasn’t enough insanity for us, so as a belated birthday extravaganza, Jenn and I went to DisneySea. That’s like Disneyland, only in weird. The rides are a bit faster and a bit scarier, like the storm flight simulator where you die at the end. I probably spent way too much money and walked until my legs started cramping, but don’t anybody dare tell me that wasn’t Japanese culture – we were the only white people in the park.

After we didn’t make it back to Yokohama until almost midnight, I sort of slept in the last day. I was still pretty miserable from all the walking the day before because every time I stopped walking my legs would cramp up, so I walked. Walked down the waterfront, through the Yokohama doll museum with a special exhibit about dolls that were sent from the US to Japan as gifts at the beginning of the 20th century, back up the waterfront, through one giant very expensive sort-of shopping mall, through another giant very expensive sort-of shopping mall, back down the waterfront, and then in the remaining two hours before on-ship time I sprinted to an internet café and back. Fun times.

But anyway. I enjoyed Japan, even though it was extremely exhausting. I’d definitely like to visit again when I have a bit more time.

Lots of love from 31˚ 33.2N/120˚ 32.6W.
Alexa

Pics are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=258874&id=834707681&l=d9e2b23a0d

News from the Boat_China

I can totally pull of another two blog posts in the next 48 hours…

*

So. I’ve heard a lot of things about Hong Kong, but not necessarily a lot of good things. Honestly, I can’t say I hate it. It wasn’t thrilling, but I definitely don’t hate it. It’s like any big city. Kind of hurried, kind of bland, a lot of pretty buildings but not a whole lot else. Imagine downtown LA or downtown Frankfurt. It’s kinda cool, yeah, but when you really want to enjoy yourself, you go somewhere else.

We took an early morning tram up to Victoria Peak, where we had a very nice 360 view of… office buildings. There’s a Bank of America building, that was a little strange, but the coolest thing about the peak was definitely the fact that when you leaned over the railing, the draft sent your hair straight up. After some aimless meandering and a horribly failed attempt to find a restaurant that serves Chinese food, we ended up walking down Hollywood Road, looking at temples and through big piles of junk that street vendors will sell for a couple of dollars. The conversion rate did cause a bit of confusion, because after having $1 be around 20,000 Vietnamese Dong, going back to 1 to 8 was certainly hard to get used to. I definitely spent a lot more money than I thought I would just because I was thinking, “Oh, that’s only 140, that’s *nothing*. Heh. WRONG.

The nicest part about my one-day Hong Kong excursion was the Symphony of Lights. Imagine a city-wide laser show, complete with music and flashing skyscrapers. Strangely surreal, and definitely not something you’d expect from a city that’s all busy-business like Hong Kong. But honestly, the only thing I got out of my stay in Hong Kong was that China could not be as cold as everyone was prophesying.  At the end of the day, I was still walking around in shorts and a t-shirt, so Beijing couldn’t possibly be that bad. Right?

Right.

*

Imagine my shock when we landed in Beijing and the airport workers were wrapped up in thick winter coats, scarves and gloves. At first it didn’t seem all that bad, but by the time we had all climbed into our bicycle rickshaws on the way to our traditional Chinese dinner, we were really feeling it. But the dinner was delicious. It was in a one-room family home, with the grimiest kitchen you could possibly imagine, but the food was good. And without wanting to sound arrogant, watching everybody struggle to use chopsticks in an at least semi-dignified matter was absolutely hilarious. Still, it was cold enough that I was very happy to finally make it to our cozy hotel and only braved the weather long enough that night to buy several sets of gloves at the closest minimart.

I wish I could say the misery ended there, but no such luck. The Forbidden City the next morning was impressive, but hard to believe considering that people lived there WITHOUT HEATING. The whole experience was dampened a little by the fact that my camera decided to give out before 9 AM, but still very impressive. The buildings are all very similar looking, but the architecture is very colorful and I’m not gonna lie – if that was my emperor’s residence, I would have been seriously awed. From the Forbidden City we went straight on to Tiananmen Square. Aside from the enormous Mao picture and the propaganda video showing on gigantic screens, it looks just like any square anywhere – only in HUGE. Not much to see there, and considering that particular piece of history happened before I can remember, I probably wasn’t impressed as I should have been.

We spent the afternoon at a school/orphanage for street children where we played (that is, they kicked our asses at it) tug-of-war, badminton (apparently that’s big in China), basketball and painted a wall with them. The communication wasn’t always the easiest, but pointing at colors and then pieces of the wall works surprisingly well with kids. It was even awesome enough to make us forget how miserably cold it still was. The not-so-nice part was that this school was *poor*. Their school uniforms were donated army fatigues. Their bathrooms were five squat-toilets side by side, with no division in between. I asked our guide if there was anywhere to wash my hands so I could put my gloves back on, and she said, “They don’t have water today.” …oh, okay. Those are the kinds of places I wish I could just magically fix. Just point my fingers, whisper my magic spell, and *bazui* - clean water, new clothes, and heating for everyone.

After all that misery, I felt really kind of guilty when we arrived at our restaurant and I saw an electronics store next door and immediately thought, “Oh wow, I can get a new camera.” But then again, I really didn’t want to be on the Great Wall without a camera, so I sucked up the bad aftertaste and set out on the most uncoordinated adventure of my trip so far. I grabbed a friend and we headed in, figuring that in an electronics store, somebody would speak English. Right? Well, the woman we asked did not. Did anybody else in the store? Not according to her, no. So we pointed at some cameras, got to look at a few, and then everything went horribly, horribly awry. She asked me a question that I assume meant which color I wanted. I pointed to silver. She shook her head. I pointed to blue. She shook her head. I pointed to green. She nodded, went over to a computer, started typing up the price, and then all of a sudden she asked for my name. This is when my phishing-paranoid brain ground to a halt, and I asked her why. She looked at me blankly, then gave me a piece of paper. I wrote down, “Why do you need my name?” She started to copy down “Why do you need my name?” *as* my name. I shook my head. She asked me something. I shook my head. She wrote it down for me – in Chinese characters. I shook my head. She wrote down something else for me – in Chinese characters.

So. Defeated by the language barrier, we decided to go ask out guide if she would be willing to come back with us and translate. But, as it turns out, by the time I’d scarfed down enough dinner to feel brave enough to go back, our guide had disappeared. So I thought to myself, whatever, I can do this. I’ve done worse. (That’s a lie, by the way.) So I asked our trip leader if I could go buy a camera next door, and he looks at me and says, “Can you do it in 15 minutes?” Eh… yes? “Good, because that’s when we’re leaving.”

Hookay. Buying a camera in 15 minutes is totally doable. Right?

So. I sprint back next door, ask the first guy I find if he speaks English, and, miracle upon miracles, he says yes! He takes me over to the cameras, my first lady appears, he asks me which one I want, I tell him, he asks me which color I want, I say blue. He says something to the lady. She shakes her head. Frustrated, I ask, “Well, what colors do you have?” He asks the lady. She says something. He tells me they have green. …I guess I’ll be having the green one, then. Back to the computer, back to that whole name game. At this point, I was rushed enough to say to hell with it, if they’re gonna stalk me with the information I’m giving out, they’re welcome to, I’m only going to be in China for another three days. So I give her my name, she prints out a slip of paper and leads me over to the cashier, I hand over my debit card and get told, “no.” Okay, why? The attendant lady writes down for me “no.” I frown. The cashier says, “China.” I frown even more. The attendant writes down for me, “China.” Okay. So how about an ATM. There is one downstairs, what wonder, so I run down, take out money, run back upstairs – and there’s a lady in front of me. A lady who’s taking her sweet time digging out her ID, signing papers, chatting with the cashier. At this point, I had about another two minutes before I was supposed to be back at the restaurant, so I was starting to get really, really antsy. But it’s all good, here comes another cashier. Who goes to help the other one with the lady in front of me. At this point, my attendant lady is trying her hardest to move me to the front of the line, but I’m still checking my watch every thirty seconds, thinking about the millions of hours of docktime I’m going to get if this doesn’t happen *right now*. But there’s a third cashier. She also takes her sweet time getting my receipt ready, but at least she’s getting it ready. I’m already two minutes late, but at this point, my money’s gone, and I’m really not willing to walk away without cash OR camera, so I turn to my attendant who points into the store and WALKS AWAY. Panic. Total and utter panic. I head off into the general direction she indicated, back to the camera section, and show my receipt to a couple of people standing around a computer. They don’t know what I want. So I pace up and down until my attendant comes running up with a box. My camera. I could have kissed her. And then strangled her, because she started to unpack and put the damn thing together. I shake my head. She nods, starting to get a little frazzled too, and then tells me to wait. And runs off to get me A BAG. (And a free camera cover. That was kinda cool.) Anyway. I shake my head, grab the stuff, and sprint into the next building, up five flights of (long) stairs, tell Ozzie I’m back, and get told, “That’s good – because we’re leaving *right now.*” In retrospect, I feel really bad for rushing my lady so much because she did try her damndest, and I think she felt bad, but oh my God, I never want to have to do that again.

Well, what better place to regain my Zen than at a Kung Fu school? It’s the school where they shot the new Karate Kid movie, apparently. Miserably cold, but we’ve established that. They put on a show, including breaking bamboo rods over their back and standing on top of boards with nails on top of a person on top of a board with nails on top of a person on top of a board with nails. We learned a couple of moves from the students and then just hung out and watched the school’s youngest doing their own lessons outside. Three and four-year-olds practicing high-kicks and stances – it’s pretty much the most adorable thing to ever walk the planet.

And then we got to the main part of the attraction: The Great Wall. Two hours drive out of Beijing, then a ten-minute walk and a ten minute gondola ride away, and… there it is. It stretched for miles in either direction. Sadly it doesn’t divide China from Mongolia anymore, but it was a clear enough day that we were hoping we saw it. It’s just mindblowing how long it is. You kinda see it disappear over a hillrise and think, “That’s a long wall…” and then you see it rise up again on the next hill, and the next, and the next. We were lucky enough to be pretty much the only people on the wall. Very lucky, actually. We ended up hearing several stories about how other sections of the wall were packed wall to wall with people. So it was great that we got the time to just hang out, goof off, take fake Kung Fu pictures and some with our touristy panda hats. And in the end, we got to toboggan down. It was terrifying, but so much fun. And while I was zipping down the hillside, all I could think was, “How am I getting academic credit for this?”

I was a little sad that we only ended up staying an hour and a half or so, but we had to start heading back. One more stop the next morning at the Temple of Heaven, and then we made our way to Shanghai. We only had one day there, which was a little sad, but we did see some interesting stuff. Despite getting a little screwed over (shanghaied… heh) by a taxi driver with a fast-running meter on the way, we were in fairly high spirits when we made it to Shanghai Barbie, the six-storey, bright pink Barbie store. Welcome to everything Barbie: Barbie clothes, Barbie café, Barbie bubble tea (it’s pretty gross), Design Your Own Barbie, and, of course, the three storey high exhibition of blonde Barbies wearing pink dresses – each one with a unique dress style and hairdo.

It was a little scary, come to think of it.

We shopped around for the rest of the afternoon, and made it back to the ship just in time to get to the very end of a humongous line while the new head of security unpacked every single bag coming onto the ship. I think we spent a good forty minutes just standing around in the cold. So that was a fun way to end it. But overall, I enjoyed it. The lack of English made life a little difficult, but then again, there’s no reason for them to speak English other than that it’s a convenience for us.

But overall, I enjoyed it. I didn’t even feel too queasy at the billions of flags and the whole communist propaganda thing. I will say that what ended up getting me was the internet. I didn’t have anybody following me around like some people did, but I’d forgotten about Facebook being blocked, and realizing that the one time I would consistently have internet access on this entire trip I wouldn’t be able to upload any pictures was a bit of a shock. And kind of annoying, to be honest. Then it started to get funny. We tried various tricks to make it on Facebook anyway, but only managed for a good fifteen minutes or so. Then I tried to look up Tiananmen Square on Wikipedia, and whatdayaknow? The page mysteriously won’t load. Oh Gee. I wonder why.

But I enjoyed China. It was great, it was ridiculous, it was insane. It was cold. But the people were friendly and helpful, the things I saw and did were amazing, and if nothing else, I got some interesting stories out of it.

Lots of love from 29˚ 26.8N/127˚ 0.2W.
Alexa

Pics are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=257321&id=834707681&l=e998dfb538

News from the Boat_India

Well, this took a really long time… I think I just needed to come to terms with the fact that India simply didn’t live up to my expectations. The reason for that is probably a combination of high expectations, bad planning, and bad luck. I still had a good time, but India just didn’t “rock my world.” That’s okay. Not every country can be my favorite country in the whole world.

That said, I went into India with zero planning. My first day was taken up by a field trip for one of my classes where we visited a street theatre performance and a village of traditional artists. Sounds cool, right? The only problem was that the theatre show was condensed from 7 hours into 20 minutes, for our convenience, and then we sat there for four hours with nothing to do. It was still cool to see the traditional art and the costumes, but still… I probably could have thought of a better use for my time. Like a Bollywood movie! A friend and I went to see “Robot” that night. “Robot” is the newest blockbuster. It’s about a scientist who develops a robot that develops feelings for the scientist’s girlfriend. And then there are random dance numbers in the desert (by a lagoon), bad CGI, evil Germans, and – most memorably – talking mosquitoes. It probably didn’t help that it was in Tamil with the occasional “That’s so cool” thrown in in English, but still. It definitely puts the more outrageous Hollywood action flicks in perspective.

The next day, we took a two-hour rickshaw ride to Mamallapurum, a city that houses 22 temples, including two out in the ocean that were discovered in 2006 when the tsunami sucked all the water away from the shore. I saw a few old temples and carvings (“old” as in 1400 years old, which sort of puts our version of old to shame) and Krishna’s Butter Ball, a sort of circular rock that sits on a slope. No one can explain why. Apparently the British brought in seven elephants to pull it down because they deemed it dangerous to the public, but no luck – it just stayed right where it was. I couldn’t resist giving it an experimental push myself, but when we left, it was still where it was supposed to be.

More temples the next day when we took the bus out to Kamcheepurum. As we were informed, it was a really nice bus – it didn’t have windows, so we got free air conditioning. But it was cheap, a grand total of 50 cents for a two hour ride, and being the only white people on a bus full of Indians was certainly cool to see. Hindu temples, on the other hand, are bizarre. If I had to come up with a word to describe them, it would have to be *kitsch*. Not necessarily in a bad way, but really, Hindu temples look like someone covered them in superglue, took the toy chest I had as a kid and upended it over the building. Pastel-colored figurines of hundreds or even thousands of Hindu gods cover every tier. The inside is not much better – here, the statues are bigger, but to the Western eye, they’re still pretty unbelievable. Of course non-Hindus are not allowed to enter the inner sanctum, but the outside of the temple is enough to give a taste of just how different this culture is to anything we’re used to.

Sadly, I wasn’t very lucky with the food. Even the traditional meal I had in Kamcheepurum (meaning you eat it all with your hands) wasn’t particularly tasty. But very environmentally friendly – your ‘plate’ is a palm-tree leaf that you roll up and throw away when you’re done, and instead of bringing you individual dishes, everybody just digs in from a shared platter. It made me sad though. I spent so much time hoping for really spicy Indian food, and all the restaurants we ended up at had strangely bland dishes.

*
Bear with me, people, we’re already halfway through my tale of dissatisfaction. Now comes the crazy part: How to see the Taj Mahal in forty hours.

1) Get on an early plane. As in, seven o’clock in the morning early. But be alert. Indians show no mercy to the sleepy-eyed traveler, and if you keep a respectful two feet distance from the counter, they will cut in front of you.

2) Get to New Delhi, 200 km away from Agra and the Taj, at 10 am only to learn that all the trains to Agra that run that day have already left. Luckily, your hotel (that you booked at the New Delhi airport twenty minutes ago) has a cab service that will get you there before it closes at 5:30. And it only costs about $120 round trip. So you can pay for it even when your fellow traveler’s ATM card doesn’t work. So far, you’re still on track.

3) Fight with the hotel manager over the phone because he wants you to pay the 5000 rupees for the cab in advance. Give in when he threatens to have the cab driver turn around and drive back to the hotel. You’re still good, though. If you leave right away, you’ll still have an hour at the Taj.

4) Take a break-neck cab ride to Agra. It’s too terrifying to sleep, so you watch the minutes tick by with growing dread. But you’re *still* good. The cabbie is trying his damndest to get you there in time (although you’re kinda starting to wish he wasn’t).

5) You make it. It’s 4:45, you’re two kilometers away from the East Gate. Your cabbie stops at a money-exchange. Then he stops to pick up a guide that you somehow manage to get rid of, because at this rate your money is barely even enough to pay for a ticket to the Taj, let alone dinner or a guide.

6) Get through security when the sky is already turning orange. There are tourists everywhere. But that’s okay – it’s beautiful enough to make up for it.
Breathe in, breathe out – this is worth it.

7) Fight to get back to the cab through a slew of postcard and magnet sellers, all fifteen year old boys who tell you how sexy you are and ask if you like the Kama Sutra. Stop at another ATM, where your fellow traveler’s card still doesn’t work, fight with the cabbie until he takes you to a restaurant that isn’t ridiculously overpriced. Take a 4.5 hour ride back to the hotel. You’re about ready to crash, but the AC is so cold that once you do happen to fall asleep, you wake up sore and cramped up.

8) Fall into bed at the hotel and sleep for eight hours.

9) Try to check out and realize that you, again, don’t have enough money. Have a clerk walk you to several ATMs that don’t work before you can finally pay the hotel fee.

10) Take a rickshaw to the Lotus Tempel, an absolutely gorgeous building, stark white under a clear blue sky. Aside from the one guy who tries to touch your face with his wet hands, people are really nice here. When you enter, a man sings a psalm that echoes through the entire chamber.
This was a good decision. This is worth it.

11) Take a rickshaw back to the airport. Find out that your flight is delayed for an hour and a half. Fly for two hours. Spent another hour and a half fighting your way through Chennai traffic before you finally, finally make it back to that familiar string of lights in the darkness. You’ve been gone for 40 hours. 28 of those you traveled. 8 of those you were asleep.
The other 4? So worth it.

*
So that was that. In retrospect, I feel like I should have spent less time looking at old buildings and more time trying to experience the culture, as I had originally planned. I heard so many wonderful stories about Indian hospitality, about people who randomly got invited to Indian homes, that I feel like I missed something fundamental. In my experience, India is loud and dirty and everyone wants your money. Even the Taj and the Lotus Tempel weren’t totally satisfying because as awesome as they are, they’re just buildings. They’re beautiful buildings, yes, but when it comes down to it, I would rather have had that connection with another human being than taken a picture and crossed something off my bucket list.

Not that I want to ruin anyone’s day, or convince anyone not to go. India was strange and wonderful and yes, mystifying. If anything, that gnawing feeling that I have in my gut whenever I think about this country makes me want to go back even more – because I can’t help feeling that there has to be more to India than what I experienced.

Lots of love from 27˚ 3.7N/166˚ 35.9E.
Alexa

India pictures are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=252395&id=834707681&l=3129f5fdd1

News from the Boat_Vietnam

Okay, everybody: Hell Week is coming up fast and I’m rather fond of my sanity, so I’ve given up on translating anything for now. Sorry. Just trying to survive.

And as a quick side note to all you smartasses that feel the need to point out how bad my German has gotten: I’ve been in the States for three years now. The average German I speak there is an hour a week on the phone with Helga (it averages out to just under 9 minutes a day, in case you were wondering). Since I’ve been on this trip, the amount of time I’ve spent on the phone speaking German has gone down to an hour and a half *total*. (That would be around 1.258 minutes a day, FYI.) And the amount of German emails I get during a semester, not counting Helga and Volkmar, averages out to about, say… five? So yeah, my German has gotten pretty bad. Believe me, I know. But it’s not going to start improving any time soon, so for the love of God, stop telling me about it.

***

71 days into our voyage, the good weather finally abandoned us. Turns out, that whole “rainy season” business? It’s not rain like we know it. It is literally water pouring from the sky for hours. It’s “I can’t take pictures because I get water on my lens every time I try,” it’s “I’ll buy this crappy poncho that I know won’t last a day because otherwise I don’t see how I’m getting home,” it’s “I don’t think I’m going out tonight because I’ll be soaked to the bone before I get to the shuttle bus.”

It’s *wet.*

But anyway. Have I mentioned how much I loved Vietnam? The people are incredibly friendly, even when they’re trying to rip you off. It seems like to them, tourism is a giant game. They’ll start giggling when they bargain and laugh at you when you scuttle through traffic with terror in your eyes. They even immortalize their spaghetti-like telephone lines and the infamous phrase, “Same same – but different” (the bane of every amateur barterer) on their cheap and cheaply made t-shirts.

[If you have no idea what that particular sentence is supposed to mean, don’t worry – neither do we.]

But they’re smart, too. The maze-like markets have an elaborate system of color-coded plastic bags in which sellers wrap your purchases to signal to the other shop owners how well you bartered. They’re experienced players in a game that foreigners struggle to understand – but a game is all it is. In India, shopkeepers get angry when you won’t budge on your price. In Vietnam, they roll their eyes, take your money, and gleefully calculate how badly you’re still overpaying.

Of course that’s city life. Outside Ho Chi Minh City, previously Saigon, the pace is slower. There are no scooter stampedes just lurking around the corner, waiting for you to set one foot on the road so they can rush out at you. Instead, boats of all shapes and sizes meander along the Mekong Delta. The floating markets sell fresh fruit and vegetables, people make rice paper and coconut candy (and rice wine, which is a little like vodka, only more intense), and people dig up mud from the bottom of the river to fertilize their gardens. I’d call it sleepy, but the obnoxiously loud motors make sleep pretty much impossible.

If it hasn’t hit you yet that you are actually a foreigner here, it definitely will out in the country. Forget English. You might as well be speaking Klingon for all the good it does you. Little kids in supermarkets start giggling when they see you. But no worries. Pointing and smiling will usually get you where you want to go.

Aside from the Delta, where I spent two of our five days in Vietnam, the major theme for my stay was the war. We call it the Vietnam war, they call it the American war, and the perceptions that the two countries have of it are as different as the names they give it. Mention the war to an American, and he or she immediately scowls. The reasons for that are usually fairly diverse – from “Communism sucks” to “Capitalism sucks,” and anything in between – but the reaction is generally the same.

Now, I never actually walked up to a Vietnamese person and said, “So, about that war…,” but I did see a lot of things relating to it. I visited the War Remembrance Museum, the Reunification Palace, and the Cu Chi Tunnels. Hell, I even fired an AK-47. Yes, they let tourists fire machine guns at the tunnels. There’s no pussyfooting around the issue. Yes, the war happened, and yes, they won. They don’t feel the need to apologize. From a German perspective, the Museum in particular was a hard. I’m not used to people saying, “There was a war, and *we* were the victims, and we’ll throw every shred of evidence we have of that in your face.” Three stories worth of photographs of an American G.I. holding part of a Viet Cong or plaques reading “This is where American soldiers killed two twelve-year-olds and disemboweled a ten-year-old boy” are not easy to take. Plus, they have a tank with Agent Orange – disfigured fetuses inside. I’m not saying it was bad, but it was definitely an experience seeing the other side.

The same goes for the tunnels, I guess. We were shown into a bunker where our guide held a brief speech about the set-up of the tunnels, and then said, “Now, we’ll see a video.” He neglected to point out that it was a propaganda video from the war, with black-and-white footage of cyclists, and a narrator detailing how the locals used to enjoy picnics in the scenic Cu Chi area before the evil Americans came in and dropped bombs on their unsuspecting heads. And while the rest of the visit was more about the Viet Cong side, about the conditions they lived under, the overall mood still seemed to be the same.
Not that you can blame them. I crawled the 100 meters through the tunnels, in the dark, with a gaggle of terrified girls behind me and only occasional glimpses of the guy in front of me. I hit my head and scraped my knees and tried to ignore how badly my legs were aching from the half-crouching position I was in. And this was an enlarged tunnel. Imagining actually having this be your life, with bombs and tanks waiting at the surface, was absolutely terrifying. I was sweating and exhausted by the time I crawled back out, and I don’t even mind enclosed spaces.

Almost equally memorable was that I got to shoot a gun. I’ve wanted to for ages, and there they were, with every machine gun imaginable. The whole thing was probably fairly sketchy, but they had ear muffs at least. And they were definitely needed. Aside from being really, really loud, shooting an AK-47 was also easy. Frighteningly easy. If I, a 5’8’’ hundred-twenty pounder, can fire a gun that dangerous that easily, I don’t even want to imagine the damage an experienced fighter could do.

The whole experience wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was certainly different. Like I said, I’m not used to looking back on a war with pride. I guess they’re entitled. Everybody likes to be proven right (whether or not they actually are, is not for me to decide). And I certainly found it valuable to see the war from their perspective. I just don’t think people should gloat about successfully killing other people.

Lots of love from 35˚ 4.2N/139˚ 41.9E
Alexa

[It was totally awesome though. :)]

Andre Ramadan (English)

Some of you may have already heard, but for those of you who haven’t: On November 6th, my fellow Semester at Sea student Andre Ramadan died of “unknown medical causes.” I’d only met him briefly and didn’t know him very well, but I’ve spoken to people who did, and, well. It’s like a storm cloud is hanging over the ship. People are only just starting to believe that he won’t be coming back.

We held an interfaith memorial service today, followed by a ‘sea burial’ in which every member of the community throws a flower overboard. My thoughts go out to Andre’s family and friends who were expecting to see him get off the ship in San Diego, whole and happy and full of amazing stories. How do you deal with that?

Andre Ramadan (Deutsch)

Manche von euch haben es vielleicht schon gehoert, aber falls nicht: Am sechsten November ist mein Semester at Sea Mitreisender Andre Ramadan wegen „unknown medical causes“ verstorben. Ich hatte ihn nur fluechtig kennengelernt und kannte ihn nicht gut, aber ich habe mit Leuten gesprochen, die gut mit ihm befreundet waren, und, naja. Es ist, als wuerde eine Gewitterwolke ueber dem Schiff haengen. Es wird uns nur langsam klar, dass er nicht wiederkommen wird.

Heute hatten wir einen ‚interfaith memorial service‘ gefolgt von einem Seebegraebnis, in dem jedes Mitglied der Schiffscommunity eine Blume ueber Bord warf. Mein Beileid an Andres Familie und Freunde, die erwarteten, ihn heile und lebendig und voller unglaublicher Geschichten in San Diego wiederzusehen. Wie geht man mit so etwas um?