Malaysia

Malaysia!
Day 1: I’m so glad I made the decision to skip my business FDP and go on the Island Orientation- I’m not sure why I booked both but good thing I did! All I heard about was how awful the FDP ended up being; they went to a rice museum…3 hours away! Our orientation was good, we started at the Khoo Kongsi temple, went to the Butterfly Farm, saw the Kek Lok Si temple, and the Botanical Gardens as well. The Kek Lok Si temple was AMAZING. It was so incredible, you walk up these stairs, and they just keep going. But throughout the stairways are just vendors, selling all kinds of souvenirs. There are all these stores in the temple, and all different parts of the temple, I couldn’t really piece it together. The garden was really cool too, there were just dozens of monkeys running around- one got mad and jumped on a light post and tried to shake it down. We headed over to Starbucks after orientation; it was DELICIOUS, of course. The mall was different; it wasn’t really a western mall even though it did have Starbucks and McDonalds. There were so many shoe stores- and to go with that, sock stores. We went to 7-11 too, I bought hot chocolate, and it’s been so nice to have packs of hot chocolate on the boat! We tried to walk back to the ship, but got stuck in Little India- you think we would be able to skip that part, but we walked through it and it was like the clean and calm version of India. It was brightly light with colored lights and everyone was just walking around- but it wasn’t over crowded.
Day 2: We thought we’d find some good markets, but we ended up in a cab that didn’t really take us where we wanted to go. We started at a flea market, which was interesting to see. So many cell phones and cell phone accessories! The flea market sold a lot of toiletries and things like watches and sunglasses- but not really knock offs that you’d expect to find. Someone was playing Hannah Montana music at their stall, it was funny. My friend Austin ate some of this huge stinky fruit that he ended up being allergic to, luckily Allison had benedryl on her. Our cab driver took us to Starbucks, then to what was supposed to be a craft market but only had one table of crafts and then the weirdest selection of clothes I’d ever seen. The men’s section was okay, they had random MTV t-shirts and things like that, but the women’s department was either traditional clothes or lingerie! We didn’t stay there very long, so we went across the street to a coffee/chocolate shop. It was great! The second we walked in we were handed free samples of all different kinds of coffee and hot chocolate, and later candy. Next-door was a place where they do Batik so our cab driver showed that to us too. We asked to be dropped back off near the mall, had lunch at Pizza Hut (it’s the same!) and walked around for a bit. I got an Abercrombie sweatshirt for…15USD at a random store. We went back to the ship and just relaxed the rest of the night.
Day 3: Allison and Bill had an FDP all morning so I slept in and then woke Andy up (Andy is roommates with Bill/Austin/and Justin) and we went out near the mall with Matt (Matt’s one of the professors son’s, he’s 17 and a senior in high school- we went on the Taj trip together). Andy wanted to get his lip pierced- apparently a lot of people did that in Malaysia. So we went to the place his friends told him about and this guy named “Fun”pierced his lip. Then we shopped a little bit, and met up with Bill, Allison, and Austin- we all had our laptops so we went to Starbucks to take advantage of the free WiFi, unfortunately Flickr was being really slow so I could only get a few pictures up but there are there some now! http://flickr.com/photos/emmyrz should be the address. Unfortunately I couldn’t label them or anything because nothing would really work and I didn’t want to sit at Starbucks all night. We shopped a bit and headed back to Starbucks to meet up with everyone, Mackenzie was there too, and there was TORENTIAL downpour! Some girl had her backpack stolen with her laptop and several cameras in it, we decided it was a good time to leave…but we couldn’t really leave the mall because we had one backpack with 2 laptops and 2 cameras in it- with the rain, so we had dinner at Pizza Hut again and went to the grocery store to pick up some dry packaged food for the boat. We also found a DVD store…I got the whole Sex and the City set for 20USD, Allison got 2 seasons of Heroes for around 15USD, Bill got West Wing- I think that’s all we got that night. Eventually we made it back to the ship.
Day 4: Allison and I went on an Arts &Crafts FDP, it was really fun. Our guide was really funny. We got to make our own Batik cloths; we dripped wax on the clothes to make the design and then painted them. It was really hard, so Allison and I ended up convincing them to let us do the one where you just paint the ones they already wax for you…so we ended up with two pieces. We waited around for a long time at the end before we had lunch. We ate and then went back to do coconut crafts but it was really rushed so I didn’t get anything or do any of it. It was still fun though, we met the boys outside the pier- that’s another thing about Malaysia, the port wasn’t finished so we had to float in the middle of the harbor and drop lifeboats and tender to the pier! It was SO awful. The weather was so hot and humid; it was hard to breathe in the lifeboats. And it was scheduled, so the lifeboats left the boat on the hour, and the pier on the half hour- if you missed it- oh well. Anyway, the boys met us there and we split up. Bill and I went to the more Western mall because he needs a computer charger and there’s a Forever21 there. I got a few things at Forever21 and looked around Gap- I just wondered what was in stores in the US and if it was the same in Malaysia and if the windows were the same and stuff. It was the nicest Forever21 I’ve ever seen! It was really big, spread out, the music wasn’t loud, and there weren’t many younger girls in there. We got more Starbucks and went back to the boat. Everyone got ready and we went out to the night market. After confusion with the taxi (it was 50 ringget, not 15)- we got there, but no one was really in the mood for it- plus we’ll be seeing most of it in Vietnam. It was all knock offs and DVDs, silly toys and American things. We ended up only staying for a bit, going into a hotel bar, then finding a taxi and going to McDonalds. It was SO GOOD. It was the highlight of the night haha. Andy, Bill, and I went- we got SO much food. This was the breakdown of our order: 3 supersized value meals, 5 “items (dollar menu), 2 desserts- less than 20USD. It was delicious. We ate it while waiting for the tender boat since we missed it by 2 minutes, but it was good nonetheless.
Day 5: Last day in Penang! Allison and I went out to find this market that only happens on the last Sunday of every month, which we just happened to be there for. It was nice- definitely more crafts than we had seen so far! There were really nice things there but we were both so tired and hot that we just spent what we had left. We stayed less than an hour and caught the next tender back. Spending the last day in port on the boat is really relaxing; everyone just hangs out and catches up. It’s a good time to get organized. Dinner was amazing too, mac and cheese!
Now we’re on our way to VIETNAM!!!! So excited. We’ve been bunkered in Singapore all day for fuel- I woke up and I can see the tug right outside my window haha. We get to Vietnam on the 30th- I think that morning we’re all running out and getting fitted for dresses, then I have my Nike FDP- 200 people signed up and only 40 got it, there’s no missing that one! I have stuff every other day, so the second day I think we’ll go to the War Remnants Museum and other sight seeing things, the third day is the Chu Chi tunnels, fourth day market, fifth day zoo, sixth day…who know.

In Malaysia!

We're in Malaysia! At Starbucks, with free Wi-Fi, it's great! The coffee is delicious.

India

Day 1: Chennai, Working Women’s Forum.
       When we got to India, you could smell it in the boat. We ate breakfast and hung out until we absolutely had to leave, everyone was much more hesitant in this port than the others to get off the boat. I left for an FDP for my women’s studies class where we visited an NGO, the Working Women’s Forum, in Chennai. It’s a really big organization with over a million members in 14 branches throughout India. I got the impression that they mainly help women set up bank accounts in their own name and they give loans to them as well. It was interesting, but not as interesting as I had hoped. I stayed on the boat the rest of the evening, packing for the Taj and just hanging out.
Day 2: Travelling
       I woke up around 5:30, and was in the Union around 6 to leave for the Taj. Our bus was infested with nats and mosquitoes, but we made it to the airport okay. The flight to Delhi wasn’t bad; I slept most of the way. After our flight we went and had lunch, saw Ghandi’s eternal flame, and headed to the train station to go to Agra. It was supposed to be a 2 or 3 hour-long train ride in air-conditioned cars. I think the AC was broken, there were cockroaches and bugs everywhere, the seats were broken, there was even a broken window (but not so broken that air came through)…and it was twice as long as expected due to “delays”(we were stopped more than we were moving)…it was awful! An adventure, but awful. No one wanted to sleep for fear of bugs crawling on them. Eventually we got to the hotel, had dinner, and went to bed. The hotel was nice, they were very friendly and accommodating. They even had shirts with the Taj on the front and “Welcome Semester at Sea”on the back.
Day 3: Taj
       The next morning we woke up really early to be at the Taj for sunrise. We missed the sunrise, but it was nice that it was quiet and there weren’t a lot of people there. It was surprising how dirty and uncontrolled the entrance leading to the Taj Mahal is. There are people (mostly children) trying to sell you things, and it’s really dirty. There are tons of bugs outside- but oddly almost none when you’re near the Taj. They have two separate lines to go through security before you enter, one for men one for women…it didn’t seem to secure, I don’t think the metal detectors actually did anything. The Taj was amazing; it’s just so weird to see in person and up close. We stayed there for a bit and then headed back for breakfast, then out to an abandoned city- it was really cool; I have lots of great pictures. We had lunch and went to the Agra Fort (also really pretty, lots of pictures). And then back to the Taj for sunset. Everyone was”Taj-ed out”at this point and we were all exhausted. But we kept going- to a place where the descendants of those who worked on the Taj made things out of marble, and to a government run market. Then to the train station, where we were on a NICE train for only TWO hours. Thank goodness! We arrived in Delhi and went to an AMAZING hotel. It’s the nicest hotel I’ve ever seen. Flat screen TVs, rain shower, down comforters…I had the best nights sleep ever.
Day 4: Traveling
       Slept in! The hotel had an amazing breakfast, and then we went on a bus tour of Delhi. Everyone was still exhausted, and most of us slept on and off throughout the tour. We stopped and got out at the Gateway monument. We had lunch and met up with a few other SAS Taj groups, and all headed over to the airport…there were so many of us, we took up almost the whole plane! We made it back to the boat, and I waited in line for an hour at gangway security because everyone had to get their bags checked. Then we waited an hour for pizza at the Piano Lounge because no one had eaten dinner yet- it was crazy up there! We played cards and had pizza, caught up on what everyone did over the past few days, and made plans for the next day.
Day 5: Chennai
       SHOPPING!! We woke up fairly early, but when we went to leave it was POURING out. It’s monsoon season! It finally stopped and we took a taxi to an outdoor market, it was an interesting experience. The streets were really dirty because of the rain, the puddles were sometimes so deep you couldn’t walk over them or through them- but locals did. I got a lot of great things at the market- but when we went to leave we had to wait for a bit and we got cornered by a begger and her baby who almost threw up on us. We left shortly after. We went to an indoor mall, which was a mix of tourist shops that all sold the same thing, and regular stores. Once we were almost out of money, we took a taxi back to the port. Once in the port, it’s still a long walk to the boat so we got a rickshaw- a little cart that a bike pulls, it was an experience! It was just me and Bill, and all of our souvenirs but that had to be like…400 pounds, pulled by this little man on a BIKE (some of them have motors…ours didn’t). Originally he had said, 50 rupies…okay, fine. We get in, the cover is down, and it starts POURING, he gets out, puts the cover up, and runs away. A few minutes later he comes back and starts peddling, it stopped raining…we’re going…so….slow. Other bikes are passing us, and the driver said “No motor yet, only 35 rupies.”Bill was like, we’ll still give him 50 rupies, and whatever we have nothing else to buy. We FINALLY get to the boat, and he wanted 200 rupies! We left the 50 on his bike and left. Back on the boat, everyone sorted through their souvenirs and washed India off of them, and took NAPS. We were all so exhausted.

I think India was the least Americanized place we’ve been so far, and it was a good experience for a lot of people- I hope. Even though Brazil was a really poor country it was still pretty clean and easy to get around. There was no way to get around Chennai; there are NO traffic laws- you just push your way through. There seem to be no regulations period. Now off to Malaysia! It’s going to get really crazy, and there are only 4 laundry days left in the entire trip- yikes! There’s very little time to plan between each country now, and even less time to do school work. I’m definitely looking forward to Malaysia/Vietnam/China/Japan though!

Waking up to the smell of...

India!
Burning rubber and natural gas, just the kind of thing that makes you want to get out of bed. We made it though, and so far so good! I had an FDP this morning and the small glimpse I've seen isn't half as bad as everyone warned about. I think they try to scare us, so we have really low expectations.

Almost over!

Midterms are half over for me, and tonight starts pre-port for India! After this there's no big breaks until after Japan, where we spend 19 days at sea- with ONE DAY off in Hawaii. Yikes! Between every other country until Japan, there's only 2 or 3 day breaks, it's going to be crazy.

I heard the rumor that they're going to give us a free hour of internet to register for classes is true, so that's good... that's right after Vietnam for me. There's a talent show tonight, after pre-port I think. Should be good! A nice break from midterm madness.

Midterms!

What a busy few days! Midterms started today, and leading up to midterms we had... sea olympics, gods and goddesses dance, sea meetings, all ship picture, study groups, group meetings, and our sea's social in the faculty lounge! Needless to say I'm exhausted and am going to sleep in tomorrow on my "day off." In about an hour I'll be half way through with midterms, I took one this morning already- and have one more. Tomorrow I'll finish writing a midterm essay, and on my next class day I'll pass that in and take one more midterm exam... which should be easy because I get a little preview today as I have the same professor for two classes- they should be similar.

Only two more days of classes after this until we're in Chennai, that's CRAZY! I thought for sure we'd all get cabin fever and go nuts on the 11 day crossing but I feel like I could spend another week on the boat at this point. It doesn't feel like it's been that long at all. We're currently trying to conserve water for Chennai, because the ship can't suck up water once we start nearing India because it's just so polluted, so we have to use what we've already sucked up and then buy in port which is really expensive. Some people are taking it seriously (one kid is really excited that he was told it was acceptable not to shower) and some people have been heard not taking it seriously at all... I guess if we don't conserve enough water they'll have to start shutting it off at certain times of day, probably morning and night- to force people to stop using it. Uh oh! I've been trying to take shorter showers but I can't go without showering!

Midterms!

I have half of my midterms today, two in a row this morning!
And these are all the ship events over the past TWO days: sea olympics (on our one "day off"), gods and goddesses dance, mandatory sea meetings, all ship photo, and my sea's social in the faculty lounge. It's been a very busy few days before midterms, our sea social wasn't everything it should've been last night. Other sea's have been getting really dressed up and supposedly the lounge has been packed... I saw people from our sea in sweats and I think there were only 30 people, it was the night before a big midterm though so what can you expect? We only stayed for about 15 minutes, then went back to studying and playing SceneIt anyway.

Only an hour until the Global Studies midterm!

Look, giraffes!

Cape Town!

I'm doing anything to avoid reading right now! I went through all 400+ of my pictures from Cape Town and sorted them, I even got them ready to upload to Flikr if I ever find the time to get to an internet cafe in port. We're in rough seas, last night was awful. Right after we pulled out of port they made an announcement to secure all items in your cabin, so we immediately took sea sickness medicine and secured things. About 15 minutes later the boat was rocking and things were flying, doors were slamming. It was awful! Things fell all night, but this morning was a little more calm. Calm enough that I can walk around without getting sick.

Cape Town was amazing, I want to come back ASAP! I love it there. The first 4 days I spent in Cape Town, and the last 3 I spent further north at the Pilanesburg Game Reserve on a safari. The very first day in Cape Town, the first thing we did was head to the mall which was only 5 minutes from port. We found a Gloria Jean's and had coffee, exchanged money, etc. We spent most of the morning just walking around the mall and then I got a ticket for city orientation, because most of the people I've been hanging out with were already going. I'm really glad I went. We went to the Castle of Good Hope, to the city gardens, had tea, and then went to a museum. It was really informative, I really like the city orientations because you get a good overview of the city and the layout outside of port. After city orientation four of us went to a restaurant/bar near the boat, Quay Four- which is where we ended up spending most nights if we went out. We met an Australian couple and a British couple- they loved us and were so jealous of our trip.

The next day I had breakfast with Esther and Allison, and then we walked around the port some more outside of the mall. After that I had another FDP visiting the District Six museum and a township. The history of District Six is interesting, but the museum itself wasn't that interesting. The first stop in the township was at a community center where the kids danced, sang, and played music for us- then we went further into a real township and saw a hostel where 16 families live. They only have one kitchen (with no modern appliances that I saw), one toilet, and one tap for all of them. There are several families in each bedroom, and it's really overcrowded. They're happy though, I don't think shelter is their main priority like it is in the US, although there were over 40 people in this little house, some of the younger kids had cell phones and they were all dressed really nicely. After the hostel we just stood on the street and all of these kids came out from no where- you couldn't ignore them because they were literally climbing on us. They'd grab your hand and pull you down to their level, they wanted their pictures taken so they could see them on the screens of the cameras. While I was crouching down to show one girl her picture- another kid jumped on my back, and then he followed me all the way back to the bus (about a 15 minute walk). I have no idea where there parents were or how big their "neighborhood" was but I thought it was really weird that they just followed us all the way out there. We drove through a few of the shanty towns and saw Amy Beihl's memorial etc. By the end of it I was exhausted!

But the next morning there was an early wake up call because we had planned to climb Table Mountain. I don't know what made me think I could climb it? I guess I expected more of a dirt path or something but it was legitimately mountain climbing. I barely made it up! It took us about 2 hours, which is what it took most other groups I talked too. At the top we stopped for lunch and then took the cable car back down. The cable car was cool- the floor spins so you get all the views!

On Monday I slept really late and then had breakfast with Bill and we walked around the mall, it was really rainy and windy outside so there wasn't much to do. We took a cab to Long Street (downtown) and walked around down there for a while but since it was raining it wasn't that fun. We went back to the ship and everyone just hung out until later on. We went to run a few last minute errands, since it was my last night in Cape Town and we have an 11 voyage before India, and we also stopped at the breakfast place for luxury hot chocolate (SO GOOD).

I hung out with the boys from the quad down the hall for a while at the piano bar on the boat, we got pizzas and talked to the crew about the election and the bailout because it had failed that day. After that I went to bed because I had to be in the union at 4:30AM for my trip.

Our flight was around 6am, a 2 hour flight, then a 3 hour bus ride to the reserve. It was such a long trip! The lodge was gorgeous though, it was a 5 star resort- which no one was expecting. We were served lunch immediately, and everyone decided it was 1,000x better than ship food. We went on our first drive, from about 5-9pm. It's really cool doing the drives at night, we saw a lot of animals on the first drive alone.

Our rooms were amazing, each room was a little cabin, complete with an indoor sitting area, an outdoor sitting area, a really big tub, and an outdoor shower... which was cool when I had to shower before 5am the second morning and could see stars while I showered! We left for our morning drive around 5:30 and got back around 9:30- lots of animals, including lions! It was so hot out, I'd say almost 100 degrees. Which was very different than Cape Town because it was freezing there. Anyway, after our morning drive we had a great breakfast, then we hung out by the pool and took naps, had lunch, and got ready for another night drive. On that drive, an elephant came RIGHT UP to our car- you could've touched it but no one wanted it to charge us. It was so crazy. We came back for dinner, went to bed early, and woke up for another early morning drive- tried to find the last of the big five, but never found the leopard. We got back and had breakfast, then got ready to leave. Another really long trip back... and back on the boat to the beginning of this blog entry!