Black History Month Performance and Other Things

So this post will be a short one. It'll be about the Diversity and Inclusion Black History Month Performance, the Sea Olympics, and me being a super sailor which all happened in the 5 day transit from Vietnam to Myanmar about a week ago.

So, the black history month performance was amazing. We had poems, dance, slave letters, stepping and a lot more people than we expected stayed to watch the performance. It was right after our cultural pre-port for Myanmar which talked about all cultural and social issues in Myanmar. We also had a monk from Myanmar on our voyage and he was there to watch our performance. But yea, the performance started from African Royalty with one of the professors on the ship, then there was poems and slave letters, then african dance, then stepping (which i performed in), then more recent poems and then a final song.

The day before was the Sea Olympics which is like a day off class where we have a ton of activities and we're separated into our seas (which is determined by where we live on the ship and then the professors, faculty, kids all had their own sea). There was 3 on 3 basketball on the basketball court that was just built about 2 weeks ago now. Also, it wasnt real basketball because there was no out of bounds and people were like playing football and just tackling each other. Everyone who played got turf burns from diving on the ball or being thrown to the ground. But there was also tug of war, a lip sync, musical chairs, and synchronized swimming which were all scattered throughout the day started at 1300 and lip sync being our last activity at 2000. I was a sea captain, meaning I had to do some extra administrative stuff for events and get my sea energized during events. It was a ton of fun.

And finally, during our logistical pre-port I was recognized as a super sailor which is: "Recognizing our Super Sailors: Email adminoffice@semesteratsea.org with names (first AND last) of those who have gone above and beyond to make this a wonderful voyage through random acts of kindness or overall positive energy" And so there was a raffle for the super sailors for a free smoothie and I won it! So that was a lot of fun.

My next post, which will hopefully be before I get to India. It will be the post about Myanmar. The reason I say hopefully is because I had a quiz yesterday, a midterm today, and have a 4 page single spaced report due in 2 days...so when I get all that dione, I'll write my post on Myanmar.

Until Then.

 

Vietnam!!!

Sorry for the wait. Also our Vietnam portion was only 4 days instead of 5, but I still made the most out of it! Also, there were mopeds everywhere! They rule the road and we almost got into at least 20 accidents by the end of the four days. The rules of the road are closer to guidelines and at times people would just drive on the wrong side of the road. And there would be a whole family on the moped, like 4 people... crazy.
 

3 words for Vietnam:
Sticky, Pulsating, Humble

The first word obviously refers to the climate of the area. It was hot and most of the time, even during the night, it felt as if we were swimming through the air! Pulsating is for how lively Vietnam was between the city of Ho Chi Minh but also the villages surrounding the Mekong Delta that I visited. This word was probably a bit magnified because it was Tet/ Lunar New Year/ Chinese New Year. For the holiday, people have a couple weeks off of work and most businesses shut down because this time of the year is focused on the family. The first couple of days we got there, the big market was actually closed, but a make shift version of it was set up on the outside of the building where the market was. Gotta make that money. My third word, humble, refers to the people themselves. They were all very kind towards us as Americans and willing to help us with directions. This was especially illustrated by the taxis and how they refused to start the meter or leave from our initial location before knowing exactly where we wanted to go. We had to use sign language, maps, and anything else we could because most taxi drivers didn't speak much English.

Overview of my 4 days:
Day 1
We got into Vietnam around 1pm and started the immigration process and things. A few of us (15-20) decided to get a villa outside the city of Ho Chi Minh. So that was our first destination as we got off the ship after the post office. There was a short 10 minute shuttle from the ship to the post office, which had ATMs and currency exchanges and even a market. Anyways, 3 taxis and a Starbucks later, we ended up outside a hotel that was close to our Air Bnb. But the adrees given to us on teh AirBnb was just the street name, with no real specific address. So After all three groups/taxis got to the Starbucks, we tried to ask the workers about the address, the hotel staff across the street, and nobody knew anything about anything. Just that this was the street it was near. About 30 minutes later, after sending out some scouts, we found the place and it was a beautiful home. 3 floors, huge living room, fish pond with greenery all around the house, and a huge speaker. We went out to eat and to the Ben Thanh Market, but the day was pretty uneventful as we were all tired from trying to find the AirBnb and there was a huge speaker in the house....soooo we stayed in for the night. The market was pretty fun though. The actual market was closed because of Tet, but some of the sellers had posted up outside the building and were still selling as if it were a normal business day. We walked around the whole outside market which probably stretched about a mile to a mile and a half down different streets and everything. I got some pretty cool new clothes and I got to bargain again which was a ton of fun. After that we headed back to the AirBnb around 9 ish.

Day 2
Of course I had a Field program this day and had to be back on the ship by 730 in the morning. A couple other people had programs at the same time too, so we all left the villa together around 5am and got to the ship before 530am. This was the best field program I have had yet! It was called the Mekong Delta Overnight and included a 2 hour bus ride to the ferry that took us 10minutes away to the Mekong Delta Lodge. This was followed by some time to drop our stuff off, pool time, lunch, and things. Next, was my personal favorite, which was a 10km bike ride through the villages, and then more time to relax and cooking dinner that night. So, the 2 hour bus ride wasn't too bad because our tour operator was great. His name was Ho and by the end of our short 36 hours together he had invited us to contact him the next time we were in Vietnam and to also stay connected through email. On a side note, it is really amazing the relationships that can be formed in such short periods of times with locals and tour guides and many many people. As I talked about earlier, this was extremely easy to do in Vietnam because the people were just so friendly and happy. Anyways, the Mekong Delta Lodge was beautiful and lunch was excellent. We had about a hour and a half between arriving and lunch, so most of us got in the pool because it was super hot and humid outside. After lunch, we had more free time to relax around the lodge and I scheduled a 35 minute foot massage for after our bike ride for just $6. It's amazing how cheap everything in Vietnam is and in case any one is wondering about the exchange rate, its about 22000 Vietnamese Dong to 1 dollar. The bike ride was amazing. We rode through villages and everyone in the villages was so happy/surprised to see us and everyone said hi as we passed. On a side note, some of these roads in the villages were 4-5 feet wide and were meant for two way traffic. A couple mopeds sped by us and one person in our group almost ended up in the river as we were biking. There were people blasting music for the holiday that sounded more than like techno than anything else. I also had my speaker to play music as we biked through the areas without music. We stopped in one of the villages for light refreshments including some mangos and some other fruits that I hadn't seen before. We also saw a traditional performance including dancing and singing from the local villagers. After, we went started the trek back to the lodge which didnt take too long. We had to take a couple ferrys across the Mekong Delta which was really cool because the ferrys were especially for two-wheeled vehicles. Anyways, we got back to the lodge early and most of us went to the pool for the second time that day. We were actually able to get our massages moved to right near the pool instead of our rooms and they led right into dinner. Dinner was another great part of this field program because we got to make the wantons and deep-fried spring rolls we ate. Vietnam, like China, also has the million course meals that seem to never end and the chef cooked extra dishes that we hadn't prepared in our session. After we finished preparing the wantons and spring rolls to be fried, a couple of us got to help stir one of the dishes and apparently when I stirred I "added the soul to the food" haha as one of the Vietnamese cooks said. After dinner some people went back to the pool and stayed up talking near the bar, but I was exhausted and fell asleep. It was like between 8 or 9pm and I didn't wake up until around 9 am.

Day 3
Welp, breakfast was at like 7 or 8am, so I missed that. I ended up just showering and getting ready for our leave at 10am. We hopped back on the boat/ferry that originally took us to the lodge and then got back on our tour bus. I forgot to mention, but our tour guide, Ho, brought his nephew on the tour and he answered a lot of our questions about Vietnam too. Anyways, we ended up walking through another village and seeing one of the rice/caramel factories. We were explained the process of how everything worked and everything is recycled and has a purpose. We also saw some snake vodka stuff and which was like fermented rice with a snake in it for some reason. Speaking of snakes, apparently its common for people in Vietnam to own Pythons because they are pretty low maintenance and only eat once a month. So I ended up holding a 7ft python at one point in the day and afterwards we went to the gift shop where I got some of the cool snacks that they had just showed us how they made. After this we saw a church and then took another ferry/boat back to our bus that took us back to the ship. We stopped along the way at one of the biggest rest stops on the way to the Mekong Delta for a great lunch. We got ice cream and everything before we continued out journey to the ship. Most of us fell asleep like the rest of our bus rides. Once we got back to the ship, I packed up some more things and headed back to our villa because it was a friend's birthday and we ended up going out that night after ordered from a bbq restaurant in the area. The reason for this restaurant choice was because the people at our preport for Vietnam said to be cautious of the food because its not all cleaned properly or properly stored. Yet, some how some of us still ended up with Traveler's diarrhea by the time we were back on the ship. Tragic.

Day 4
Another semi-early morning, but I couldn't leave the AirBnb until the maid got there so I could give her the keys. After that I dropped off some stuff at the ship and headed back into town near the post office and Ben Thanh Market. We started by going to the War Museum which the Vietnamese call the "American War" The museum was beyond moving and really teaches you that there are really at least two sides to every story. Even with all the horrific acts committed during the war, the Vietnamese people were still so kind to us as Americans which I found astounding. After the museum I headed to Ben Thanh Market to get the full experience since it was kind of closed when I went on the first day. I actually ended up seeing one of the girls I bought some pants from on the first day and she remembered me and invited me out to get drinks with her and her friends that night. But of course I had to decline because we had to be on the ship by 10pm, absolutely tragic. Anyways, the market was a lot of fun when it was actually open and afterwards I got some food and a massage before heading back to the ship. 

That's pretty much it for Vietnam. That was a few days ago though and a lot has happened on the ship since leaving Vietnam. That'll be in my next post probably in like 24-36 hours from now because there was the Diversity and Inclusion Black History Month Performance, Sea Olympics, and I'm a super sailor!

Quote of Vietnam:
"To dream anything that you want to dream, that is the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do, that is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself, to test you limits, that is the courage to succeed"



 

China and Hong Kong

My 3 words for China/Hong Kong:

Beautiful, Congested, Smog

The views from the Great Wall were gorgeous, the cities were congested and covered with a layer of smog which you can see in most of my pictures.

Sooooo, because of a comment on my last blog post from someone about drinking too much, I have to decided to not include those stories in these posts anymore lol. It is a filler between the end of the day and our next morning which we spend socializing, but watevs. The story goes on.

Brief as can be overview:
First day started in Shanghai where I had my field lab that was supposed to go the Coca-Cola factory but didnt because of the Chinese/lunar new year and it was also a Sunday, so it was closed. We ended up going to the Marriot instead. Also talked to some relatively local high school Chinese students about studying abroad. Later in the night included a dinner at Lost Heaven, and other things that shall remained unmentioned.

Second day included a very long trip to Beijing through buses, trains, planes, and everything between. We had a great family style dinner where the plates never stopped coming and afterwards headed to our hotel.

Third day was where the true adventure started because we had a 10km walk on the wall which turned into a 10 mile hike instead because of some things I'll mention later. After this hike in the non-touristy parts of the wall, true exhaustion set in.

Fourth day included part 2 of our great wall hike, but it was in the more touristy parts and also was wayyyyyy steeper than the previous day. Like basically straight up the mountain range. Luckily, it only lasted for half of the day and we had another fantastic dinner at one of the best duck restaurants in Beijing. According to our tour guide for the program, in Beijing, one must do 3 things, visit the wall, visit the forbidden city, and finally, visit this duck restaurant!

This leads me into my fifth day where we did in fact visit the Forbidden City which is a lot bigger than you would think. In the old ages it is where the emperor would live which had huge walls to protect the emperor, so the city its self was a good 2-3 hour walk with all the people we had. After this we took buses, trains, and planes to Hong Kong, which, I learned, is a very sensitive topic for the Chinese population. We were explicitly told not to talk about it or we could be put in jail....soo we didn't talk about it.

The sixth day I woke up super late (not because of drinking, just exhaustion)...like 11am and we had to be back on the ship by 6pm, so I hurried to get ready and got on one of the free shuttles to the city of Hong Kong and went to the Black Market for my last time in the area. I did get back to the ship on time which was good.

Bad news came that night though because we were told that we would be setting anchor right outside of Hong Kong because we were waiting for the seas between HK and Vietnam to settle down. Apparent 20ft swells kept us in the HK area an extra day, so we will be exactly 24 hours late to Vietnam and we will still be leaving on time. So that means 4 days instead of 5 for Vietnam which changes alot of the trips that were scheduled to go to Cambodia and absolutely destroyed the plans of people who planned to travel independently. Luckily, I hadn't made any plans yet, so no money was wasted here!

Day 1:
So like I said, Day 1 was at one of the Marriots in the city of Shanghai. It's lobby is on the 38th floor and it has all glass windows so people can get a 360 view of the city...when its not too smoggy outside. We got a full tour of all the types of rooms except for the executive suite because they were all booked. Also got a special tour up to the highest library in the world on the 58th floor of the hotel and got to go through a "harry potter" door that led outside in the book stacks as the hotel manager calls it. The view was amazing and I got some great photos up there of the city. This was followed by lunch and a talk with a few execs from the hotel about general Marriot stuff and their other brands. Apparently its pretty easy to get promoted once you're in the hotel business in China just because the economy is emerging quickly and their is a greater demand for hotels in the region and this of course leads to the construction of many new hotels. Speaking of emerging markets, that is the class that this field lab was for, so it was pretty cool to hear about it. After our morning at the hotel, we headed to a restaurant in the financial district of Shanghai and met with some high school students from the Shanghai region. Some of them were from different provinces near by and traveled up to 2 hours to get there and a lot of them were really shy. We talked a bit about our program because all of the students did want to study abroad at some point in their college career. Interesting contrast from US and China is their college entrance exam. So we have the SAT or ACT which we study for a few weeks or hire tutors for and things. But in China, the studying for their college entrance exam takes an entire year essentially and because there are not enough of universities to accommodate all of the students who would like to attend college, the exam is a very stressful part of the students' lives. One recently graduate high school student was telling us how he went to school from 6 or 7am and did not go home until 10pm just studying for this exam. He also did not have weekends, so this studying, which lasted for about 11 months, was done without a weekend and without breaks essentially. The reason for this is because the top businesses all hire from the top universities and the top universities only pick those with the highest schools. And of course there is a huge gap between these top universities and the rest to make things worse. Crazy stuff. Anyways after that ended, we went back to the ship and I got ready to go out to dinner at Lost Heaven which was recommended to us by a person from the embassy in China. He was on the ship for a couple days and actually came to a few classes on the ship including my finance class. But that's pretty much it for the first day.

Day 2:
Long nights. early mornings. repeat. So I signed up for the Hiking the Great Wall field program, so we had a 2 hour bus ride from the ship to airport in Shanghai. The airports in China are massive! Crazy. But we had a flight from Shanghai to Beijing, another 1.5 hour bus ride to dinner, then another 45min bus ride to our hotel. The flight was awesome, they had like games and movies and TV shows on the TV that was on the seat in front of you. They served lunch on the flight. It was quite excellent. Also, planes in China don't land at the terminal. They kinda just land in a safe zone out in the airfield and then you take a bus from the plane to the terminal which was super crowed. Like the bus was full already, then 50 more people got on it because there was only 2 buses for our flights to get back to the terminal. Let's just say we got real close on that bus ride. Fast forward to dinner, which was family style, and we had everything, its like the plates never stopped coming. There was white rice (which always came near the end), eggplant dish, mushroom and fungus dish, orange chicken strips, soup (which meant the meal was over), pork dishes, beef dishes and like 6 other dishes. Anyways, after that great meal, we headed to our no star hotel. It was beautiful. I really wish I could send pictures through this because my explanation simply won't do this hotel justice. It looked like one of the upscale hotels you might find in Vegas, but it was located within a mile of the Great Wall. You could actually see the Great Wall from our hotel with all its lights and everything, it was gorgeous.

Day 3:
We started very very early in the morning. We had to eat breakfast, be packed for the day, and on the bus by 830 for our hike of the Great Wall. It was freezing cold that morning, but as soon as we started climbing the endless stairs to get to the low point of the wall, everyone was sweating. Not the best combination with the sweating and it being below freezing but its all a part of the adventure. We actually ended up walking on a part of the wall that if often not viewed by tourist because its a bit older, more unsteady and things, but its was a ton of fun. The views from the mountain range were breath taking, just like the stairs we had just climbed so there was a severe lack of oxygen. Anyways, we got to the half-way point where we had lunch and guess what lunch was?! You guessed it! McDonalds. It was the only thing close enough to the mountain that could be carried up before getting cold...so that's what we had. Also had the hot milk tea, coffee, hot water, coke, and sprite. Everyone was freezing by this point as we had just hiked approx. 5 miles in the mountains. And I don't know how else to stress this, but if you have ever seen a mountain range, it goes up a few hundred feet, then down a few hundred feet, back and forth. So we were all exhausted as well. And you would think that going down would be easy, but this was the part of the wall that hadn't been kept up as well and not seen as many refurbishing projects if you will. So going down was just a hard as going up because the stairs were uneven and one missed step meant you were taking the fast way down a mountain. Also we walked across quite a few 4-5wide parts of the wall soooo, pretty close to falling off the whole time, but I still had a great time. Anyways, after lunch, we had to go down the mountain because we had gotten really close to a military zone the wall and its really just never smart to trespass on military territory, soooo we went down. Through the forest, dirt, snow. It was a pretty rough walk down. People fell quite a few times. Luckily, I remembered that I had my speakers and they seemed to cheer everyone up because everyone was pretty tired at that point. I thought we had finished to be honest, because after we stopped for lunch I was about ready to sleep. But we had only finished half, so we were walking through the valley for about an hour before heading back to the top of the mountain, past 5 more towers, and finally finished for the day. Golly, that was the best night of sleep I have ever had. But, before that happened, we went back to the hotel and most of us went to this little water village amusement park type thing right next to our hotel.It was somewhat like a water village, but not quite, still beautiful at night though.

Day 4:
Another day, another hike. We had to be out of the hotel by 8 and completely packed up because this was our last night at that hotel. So we hiked one of the more touristy sections and man-o-man was it steep. It seemed like we were climbing vertically and some points and the same when trying to get back down. The stairs didn't help at all either because they were more uneven than the first day and a bit more crumbly as well. But the views on top were more than worth the stairs. It felt like we were literally on top of the world in some of the towers. The 36t0 views, the beauty, and it was fantastic that it was sunny because apparently the views are not that nice because of the smog. That hike was much shorter than the day before and we had the music going the whole time. It was like a 25 minute walk down stairs and rock to get down from the mountain this day, but it was all so beautiful that we were kind of sad that the hike was so short. We took the buses into the city of Beijing and went to that famous duck place. On our way, we went through a police check with guards holding M-16s. On a side note, because this just reminded me, the second day in the Shanghai airport, we saw airport security/police with M-16s riding on the little golf cart things. M-16s everywhere. But I digress. The duck restaurant was amazing and they cut the duck right in front of us. Duck is actually pretty good, but jellyfish are terrible. Jellyfish was one of the other dishes we were served at some point and I was being adventurous and trying everything and I found out that fungus/mushrooms and jellyfish really are not for me. At some point in this day we also went to the black market where I bought any and everything. Apparently I am really good at bargaining because I got most of the things for a tenth of the original price. Other people were paying at least half the price or even full price. Crazy Stuff. This night, we stayed at a Holiday Inn in the city of Beijing and it was the hotel that two other field programs were staying at so there were about 200 SAS students in that hotel. I'll just leave that there.

Day 5:
Of course another early morning leading us to the Forbidden City. Had to be out of the hotel and on the bus by 730. We had like an hour bus ride to the Forbidden City and I slept the entire way. Got up and walked through the Forbidden City for a couple hours. Saw a lot and heard a lot about the emperors many concubines haha. Apparently one emperor had over 3,000 and another emperor was stabbed by one of his. Most of the emperors were extremely paranoid because they always thought someone was trying to kill them, and they were right, but sounds like a crazy life to live. We took a group photo outside of the Forbidden City and that was great. We were all pretty worn out from the two days of hiking and the city seemed like it was endless. There were also 2 basketball courts inside the city which was pretty cool to see and there were guards everywhere. We left there and headed to another fantastic family style meal which also had many dishes. After that, we headed to the airport, I got a picture with Ning, our tour guide, and we were off to Hong Kong. Our plane left about 30 minutes late, we almost left one of the students because he wanted to get pizza hut instead of getting to the terminal, where we took a bus to the plane. But he ended up making it. We arrived late in HK and then lost a student between the terminal and immigration, so we had to wait 30 minutes before we decided to start walking. He found us on our way to the bus that was going to take us to the ship. So we didn't get back to the ship until 2330ish and I ended up going back out to get some dinner with a couple of friends because I had missed dinner on the plane due to being sleep. So we left the ship around 0045 ish and didnt get back until super late.

Day 6:
By far the most uneventful day, simply because I didnt wake up until 11 and was going to leave at 12 but all the free shuttle had just left like 15 minutes before I got there. So I waited until 1300 and was going to go to the city alone, but some people hopped on the same bus I was on and I was in a group project with one of them so I just tagged along. We ended up at the Black market by about 1400 and keep in mind, we had to be back on the ship after security and immigration by 1800, so we were kind of cutting it close. The black market was fund again and I got to bargain for some aviators and a few other souvenirs. We grabbed lunch at a McDonalds and most of us got the prosperity burger. It was chicken with hash brown on top and was delicious. They need to have it back in the states. We ended up making it back to the ship with more than enough time to spare.

But we should be docked in Vietnam in around 12 hours, so that's exciting. I really want to go to the war museum and also check a couple of markets on the first day, so hopefully stuff will be open even though its Tet.

We've been practicing our performance for the Diversity and Inclusion group which is on the 16th of this month so that's exciting. Other than that, the homework is kind of starting to pile up and become a difficult with all the field lab reports and papers in general we have to write.

But that's pretty much it. Ummm I'll have phone service for the next 4-5 days and I have unlimited text messaging so hit me up I suppose. Turns out I don't have service in Burma, so I'll be off the grid except for these blog posts after Vietnam and Burma. We also have about 5 days of traveling between Vietnam and Burma, sooo thats exciting I guess. Sad to see the voyage is nearly half over and while my time in country feels like months are going by, every time I get back on the boat it reminds me that this voyage is flying by. So I'm trying to make the most out of each day, whether its on the ship or in country.

I had something else to type, but it has alluded me. It's also past 1am so I'm gonna head to bed because I have to be up at 8am to arrange some last minute travel plans for tomorrow.

Quotes of China:
"We must travel together like sticky rice" - Ning our tour guide because we had 46 people and some would always fall behind.

Also another great quote from Ning. He was talking about drinking after our hikes or going into Beijing on our last night and someone asked him about a Fake ID. He said, "Fake ID? Like you're playing in the movie or something? That's really cool for you. It's like you are FBI agent or something" - Ning

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving"

Random Thought:
At one point in the voyage I received a fortune telling me that I had great luck and that I should gamble. I was going to try my fortune in Macau which is located near Hong Kong, but we got there was too late on Day 5 to try to get there. I wonder how long fortunes last. Also we moved back another hour, so now we're only 12 hours ahead of the east coast.