SORRY THIS ALL IS SO LATE! still working on the more recent events of my trip!


India:
4day/ 3night trip to Agra and Varanasi

wake up at 3:30, kill me. Went to airport at 4:15am for our flight to Varanasi. The big event for the afternoon was a tour of the ancient city of Sarnath where Buddha preached his first sermon. There is a huge brick Dhamekh Stupa where practicing Buddhists circle clockwise and pray. I didn’t really understand what was going on and started walking around it counter clockwise but soon figured out that I was doing something REALLY wrong by the looks I started to get. Throughout the ruins, Chinese pilgrims in all white sat in groups and prayed some of them placing there hands and faces against the outside of the round Stupa walls. Next we went to a museum of ancient art. This museum was nothing like a museum at home and was having construction done on the inside. Our guide told us that many of the artifacts are no longer here and in western museums today. We went back to the hotel and had dinner then went to the hotel bar and had a couple drinks before going up to bed. The going out scene in India is sketchy at best. No one really drinks so they close down bars, clubs, and any liquor stores at the latest 11pm. Probably a good thing because of our 4:30am wake up call the next morning

We got on our bus at 5am and heading to the Ganges River, one of the holies sites for Hindus. Once at the river we got on a boat and were rowed down the river as the sun rose. The Ganges River in Hinduism is supposed to release the souls of people from the perpetual cycle of birth and rebirth and have their souls reach “moksha”. Anyways, as the sun rose we watched as men striped down and submerged themselves in the dirty water, some even swimming for a bit and then getting out of the water. We were rowed down the river as the sun rose. It was really gorgeous and I have some great pictures from it. Once we got further down the river we got to the spot where they brought bodies to be burned and put in the water. I couldn’t see any dead bodies in the water and no bodies were being burned but once we got out the boat you could see the spot where bodies had been partially cremated. We began to walk through the tight winding alleys back to the buses. I tried to soak in all that was going on around me including the food preparation, small stands selling cheap plastic objects and people praying but I was preoccupied with the task of not walking through shit. Yes literally shit, cow, human, dog you name it and it was there in those alleys just waiting for us to step in. More than once I quickly looked up to find myself face to face with a long horned cow, one of Hindu’s sacred animals. Finally we emerged out of the smells of shit and pee, bo and spicy food and are bombarded with speeding motorcycles and scooters. We somehow weave through all the traffic and get to our buses with dirty children begging us for money. Back to the hotel for breakfast then off to airport for New Delhi. We get in and take a tour of the city on the bus and visit a Sikh temple. The “holy water” that the people drink and put their feet looks oily and definitely unsanitary. We then get to our hotel welcomed by a fully outfitted “ethnic” Indian man at the door. India is full of both authentic differences and fabricated ones like at the touristy hotels.

4:15 wake up call. Go to railway station to take the train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. More disfigured men, women, and children approach us at the train station begging. Our group of 40 white people sticks out like a sore thumb and people stare and point at us. We get to the Taj after a walk through children sellers of small plastic snow globes with small white flakes falling on the Taj Mahal in the center. Why people decided a snow globe was a good idea for a souvenir at a place that never snows I have no idea. The haggling was sport in and of itself. One of my guy friends got 10 snow globes for a dollar he then commenced to just give out the cheap plastic trinkets. The Taj Mahal is more breath taking in person than I could have guessed. First off it is so much bigger than I imagined and unlike every other inch of India it is relatively clean. The white stones sparkle in the sun. The photo shoot begins, the best is watching all the Asians either posing straight faced or with a peace sign. Sadly the funniest picture I saw though was one of the guys on my trip posing so that the tower to the right of the Taj was strategically coming out of his crotch and his hand was held around the tower…. Totally appropriate. The inside of the Taj is noting compared to the outside. Will have to wait to show everyone pictures. After lunch we went to Fatehpur Sikri, an abandoned city built by Emperor Akbar to get a male heir.  There was a massive pool on one side of the massive complex with a thin film of green bacteria thriving on the surface. Next think I know an Indian man strips down and jumps the 15 feet down into the pool. So disgusting. Then everyone wanted to film it so they somehow communicated to him that he should jump in again… That night we went back to the hotel and found out that there was a club attached to the hotel. We ended up getting into the VIP section and partying with Bollywood stars… Everyone told them that it was my birthday so they bought me two bottles of Dom. Faking your birthday always pays off. Wake up call the next morning at 6:30 was an amazing sleep in. Most memorable part of the next day of traveling was when one of my guy friends (still quite inebriated) left his entire suitcase at the hotel and had to go back and get it. He barely made the plane. Also in the airport at 9am stuffing our faces with McDonalds and subway was fantastic.


Vietnam:

Day 1:
Like most other ports we decided to walk around Ho Chi Ming City for the first day. We walked to a large market and tried to keep the group together while winding through the tight walkways between the little stalls and shops. Common goods being sold were chopsticks, bowls, and clothing. We all decided that we wanted to have clothes made so we went in search of fabric to take to a seamstress, (the skirt and the dress I had made were dirt cheap and not really that great… you live and you learn) Lunch was great especially when we saw other white people in the restaurant.  Experimenting with all the different food in all the different countries we have visited is always a bit of a danger so seeing that other tourists could eat there too was reassuring. One of the women in the group came over and we soon discovered that they were looking at us to go off our lead and we were doing the same to them. We decided to skip on the ice in our drinks and the dog on the menu. In the afternoon we set up a tour for ourselves on the Mekong Delta for the next day. For dinner one of my friends Meredith invited a group of us to go out to dinner with her and her mom. We went to a French restaurant and I had the first good salad ive had since January. There was goat cheese on it. Enough said, Went back to her mom’s hotel and had a cocktail at the bar. There was wifi so I tried calling everyone in my family. No one picked up my call except Will (annie’s boyfriend) who had just left my family in St, barths. Needless to say I was pissed off at the fam. We decided to just go back to the boat for the night because everyone was so tired and we had to get up early the next day for our tour.
Day 2:
Our tour on the Mekong delta was very touristy but still fun. We took a boat down the river for a bit then stopped to walk through small villages on different islands. Lunch was the most exciting event of the day where they brought us an entire fried fish including the head with eyes, all the fins, and the scales. To eat it you had to just use your fingers and pick at the fish to get a good piece of meat out of the side of the fish without getting bones. Cassie and I were really the other ones brave enough the fish. It was great but not bad either. We got back to HCMC at like 4pm and made dinner reservations at a sushi restaurant near the dock for my bday. Sushi was great and made me sad that we weren’t going to Japan. Was weird turning 21 in a country where being 21 doesn’t matter. Will have to celebrate again when I get home! After dinner we went to a bar and then was home by like 2. Next morning I was extremely hung over but had to get my stuff together to go on my trip to Cambodia.

Arriving in Vietnam tomorrow (and getting angry emails from the fam) has made me finally start my blog about my travels in India. The days following India I was mostly trying to catch up on sleep because the warning on my trip, “this is a rigorous itinerary with many early mornings “, did not lie at all. I found that I slept more on buses and planes than I did in an actual bed. But before I went on my trip I had two days in Chennai to explore.
Day 1:
First off India is serious about immigration. Each student, teacher, and life long learner had to do a face-to-face meeting with an officer who checked our paperwork and stamped our passport. Once we got off the boat we had to take a shuttle out of the port because the government didn’t want us walking around in the port. To leave the port area we again had to check with officers who looked at our passports and visa’s again. As soon as we (5 friends Cassie, Kelly, Farrah, Hailey, Meredith, and me)  left the gate we were bombarded with men trying to get us to ride in their taxi/ rickshaw.  One man got our attention and told us he could fit us all, 6, in his “very big AC taxi”. The taxi was absolutely the same as a normal taxi and the AC did not work… first lesson in India: see what you are going to be traveling in. We told our driver that we wanted to go to the market. Second lesson in India soon followed: your driver will take you were he wants to take you, mainly his families or friends stores. We finally told him that if he did not bring us where we wanted to go we would get out of the cab. We heard “just one more shop” about 5 times before he took us to a market. Each shop we went to there were other SAS students there. The taxi drivers must have made a deal with storeowners to bring us to certain shops. Also Indians pretend to know what you are saying in English but they have no idea and do what they want anyways. They also say “yes, yes” even when they have not understood one word that has come out of your mouth. Anyways the first day in Chennai was very much an adventure. We just kinda went with the flow. Visited many stores, one market, one place for lunch (where I had my tofu that I thought was chicken), and one mall (trust me VERY unlike a mall in the US). I didn’t really buy much. Ive found that Im not really into the crazy clothes and tapestries… A lot of people on the boat are kinda hippy (can you say Colorado?) and into that but im not really so much. Anyways, by the time I got back to the boat I was sticky, hot, and exhausted. I ate up in the dining hall then took a shower and got in bed. Some people went out but India doesn’t keep bars open past 11pm so the nightlife isn’t really the party people expected. I was very happy that I stayed in and actually got some sleep.
Day2:
On the second day in Chennai, I went with a group of my friends to Mamallapuram, which is about an hour and a half away from Chennai. This city has pretty much turned into a tourist town. We had a great time walking around the old stone carvings of elephants and Hindu gods. Some of the carvings were just out of a wall of stone while others were carved buildings with stone gods inside. There is no longer any worship done at this site but it was interesting for me to recognize the three main Hindu gods from my World Religion course, Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva. After walking around for a while and taking some great touristy pictures, we went down one of the market street and shopped a bit. I bought 5 of something… wonder who those are for…. Some of my friends that were with us had to be back at the ship by 2 for an SAS trip so we got back in the taxi and headed back to Chennai. There was AC in this taxi so the trip wasn’t awful. When we got back to the port everyone but Cassie and I went back to the ship. We stayed in the taxi and tried to get him to take us to a restaurant that one of her friends who had been on semester at sea before recommended. Of course the driver said he knew the place but we soon found he had no idea where we wanted to go. He ended up taking us to a more western type place where I had basically strips of chicken in peanut sauce. Once we got back to the boat I showered and got in bed because I had to get up at 3am to leave for my trip.

I WILL BLOG MORE LATER!

had lunch today and thought the tofu was chicken! India is turning me vegetarian! (temporarily) the curry type dish though was amazing and since no one i was with really liked spicy food i basically ate the whole thing. the bathroom scene is still good as well! such a pleasant surprise! tomorrow i am exploring chennai some more, maybe even going to a temple (heids you would be so proud) then i leave for my 4 day 3 night trip to Agra and Varanasi that night at 3:45am... should be super fun. miss you all!

Tomorrow is our first day in India! i am super excited but also really nervous. everyone keeps saying it is the hardest port and definitely the biggest culture shock. i just hope i don't get sick. if i survive without dealing with major bowel issues then i will have been victorious. tomorrow and the next day i have free to explore Chennai then the next 4 days and 3 nights I will be on my trip to Agra and Varanasi. All I have to say is wish me luck!!!

Mauritius!
So this port was not the most cultural/educational. We were only there for one day so everyone decided to rent catamarans and sail around for the 5 hours we had free. We got the most amazing weather so we swam and snorkeled all day. I'm not going to lie I had a couple rum and cokes in me so the water was a nonissue. I felt like i was in st. barts. the water was so warm and everyone swam in between all the boats to see other sas people. I have a couple war wounds from coral on the bottoms of my feet but the neosporin and bandaids that Heids insisted on me taking came in handy. back on the boat now and on our way to India. 10 page paper is handed in so I have a couple days to relax and hopefully lay out up on the 7th deck. In one day it will be March and we all know what event happens in March... miss everyone!

Cape Town!

To start this has been my favorite port yet. I definitely want to come back at one point in my life. The trip did not start out well though. The winds were so high the first day that we couldn’t get into the port. I guess where we docked was pretty narrow and with the high wind we might have crashed or damaged the boat. So that Thursday stuck on the boat was miserable. Everyone was so ready to get off the boat but we all just had to sit on the boat with nothing to do (of course I could have done work but I didn’t…) I felt really badly for some kids though because they were missing their safaris or one of my friends was supposed to meet his parents in cape town. Good thing I had nothing planned and was just going to explore Cape Town that day. Anyways, I spent a good portion on the day in bed with about 5 girls packed into jenna and my beds and watched movies. We got an update at like 5pm saying that we were hopefully going to get in between 11pm and 1am so we got more excited because then at least we would be able to get off the boat and get a drink somewhere. By 3am we gave up though and went to bed when we still hadn’t made any progress toward docking. When I woke up at 8 we were still on the open ocean. Let me tell you I was not happy at all. Luckily the wind had died down and bit and we were able to get off the boat around 12pm which meant I could still go on my Robben Island trip. We got on buses and went to one of the first townships built for blacks removed from the inner part of the city during the beginnings of apartheid. Lunch was very rushed because we had to get back to the docks to get on the boat that would take us to Robben Island and the traffic was crazy because there was a U2 concert in the soccer stadium which is right near the port area. We made the boat though and got to watch the seals swimming along beside us. The most interest part of the tour was that our guide had been a prisoner there for 7 years so he was able to tell us what it was like to actually have been there. He talked about the hunger strikes that the prisoners would do and how different blocks would communicate with each other. I also learned that the island had not always been a prison. One of its original uses was a leprosy community so that the disease would be isolated.
That night we went out to an amazing Italian restaurant port area. It was so odd because walking around looked like the US. Everything was extremely western and new because of the World Cup from last summer. After dinner we went to Long Street which looked exactly like Bourbon Street in New Orleans (with police on horseback and all). We pretty much just bar hopped and met up with other semester at sea kids throughout the night. When I got back to the ship though I had an unwelcome surprise. The safari that I was going on the next morning that was scheduled to leave at 8:30 was moved to a 6am departure…. Waking up at 5 to pack was not a fun experience. After a bus to the airport, an hour long flight, then another van ride we finally made it to the game reserve. The whole safari was absolutely incredible. There were only 6 of us (all kind of odd people but I made the best of it) which made it easy to do a lot of different activities. The next two and a half days were mostly going out in the massive Land Rover and seeing animals. One of the highlights of the trip was when we went on a short hike to go see hippos and on our way back we had to practically run because elephants were coming along out path and we had to get back to the Land Rover before they got there. We were then able to take pictures with the seven elephants 30 feet away. Another highlight was seeing an entire pride of lion with two full grown males, one female, and four cubs (they were 3 years old though so not little anymore). One of the cubs was so close that I could have put my hand out of the Land Rover and touched it. I have some amazing pictures of everything. Had to go back to delete some back picture on the last day because I had filled up my memory card. I was so happy to have Dad’s really big lens which let me take some awesome pictures. Wish I could upload pics to the blog! Here is a list of all the animals I saw though:
Lion, cheetah, buffalo, elephant, whit rhino, black wildebeest (which the south africans pronounce “vildabeest”), blue wildebeest, white lion (there are less that 500 in the world, it’s a rare genetic mutation that makes the lions white instead of yellowy orange), giraffe (including a couple days old one!), zebra, hippopotamus, warthog, black-backed jackal, blesbuck, kudu, nyala, waterbuck, gemsbuck, springbuck, red hartebeest, bushbuck, impala, eland, grey duiker, mountain reedbuck, chamca baboon, and vervet monkey.
So basically saw the big 5 (minus the leopard) and A LOT more.

We got back to the ship that night just in time to get ready and go out to dinner with a bunch of people. The restaurant was about 40 min drive away to this hotel (I think) that also has a winery. Food was much more African with lost of regular and bush meat. They also painted small designs on our faces. Everyone had something different. Unfortunately I got a design across my forehead that looked like a unibrow… so cute.  That night we went back to Cape Town and bar hopped again with other semester at sea kids.

The next day we woke up early to go skydiving! Still can’t believe I actually did it. I went up in the plane with one other girl and the two guys we were strapped onto. We were in the plane for about 20 min where we got the most amazing views of the coast, Table Mountain, and Cape Town. Before I knew it the guy started strapping me onto him and telling me to put on the goggles. My friend I was with went first and watching her fall out of the plane was so crazy. Surprisingly though I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I would be. I think I just convinced myself that I was doing and there was no turning back. After she jumped I had to put both my legs out of the plane and then we just fell. The first couple second were scary and then I was so happy and blown away at how amazing it all was. It was the biggest rush of my entire life. We free fell for 1 min then he opened the parachute at 5,000 feet. Going down in the parachute was just as cool as the free fall. It was so crazy looking down and only seeing your legs and nothing below you. The view was so beautiful. The guy through pulling down on either side of the parachute made us spin in circles. When we landed I was completely speechless and could barely walk my legs were like jelly. I was breathing like I had just sprinted a mile. The whole thing was so awesome.

The rest of the day we all just went back to the port area and had our last non ship meal. On ship time was 6pm so at 5 we went back to the boat. It was depressing getting back on because I wanted to stay in Cape Town longer and do more things.

We are now on our way to Mauritius but lucky for me I have a presentation, midterm, 10 page paper, and four page paper to get through before!

We all realized today that we only have 2 more months left. Time has absolutely flown by!

So i am still on the boat because it is too windy so we can't dock in Cape Town! such a bummer. i am so excited to get off this boat so i really hope the wind dies down enough for us to dock by tonight. last night the boat was rocking so badly that the waves were coming up and hitting my window and my drawers and closet kept opening and banging closed. so crazy!  fingers crossed i get to cape town soon!