Sea'lympics

Yesterday was the glorious epic of victory and defeat that is the Sea'lympics. Ten seas locked in struggle for paper crowns, disembarkation privileges, and honor.

I was on the Pacific Ocean team which was comprised of faculty, staff, spouses, dependents and senior adult passengers. The students, I believe lovingly, referred to the Pacific Ocean as "the old people and the kids." Old people and kids maybe, but we showed them who was boss in ping pong and limbo with first place in each. A second place victory in synchronized swimming, and third place in freestyle and talent show.

I was the captain of the spaghetti and marshmallow team. We really thought we had a lock on it, as we worked on the schematics of our structure for hours the previous day. Our downfall was the the substance that was being used instead of marshmallows (they couldn't find marshmallows) was a lightweight flimsy material that wouldn't take the tension our structure required. The captain of the first place team is a senior at Colorado School of Mines, and the second place captain already has a job waiting for her at NASA in Houston when she graduates.

Some of the other events were volleyball, egg toss, obstacle course, relay swimming, tug o war, dodgeball, flip cup and hot dog eating.

I was dreading the Sea'lympics a bit, I thought it'd be too much chaos, too much anxiety. It was chaos, but it was also very fun. I was exhausted at the end of the day, but had to admit that it was enjoyable. I don't know if everyone felt that way though. At the talent show several of the acts spoofed the person who makes the announcements and the global studies professor. Just one spoof would have be one thing, but it was act after act. I think the GS professor was pretty impervious to it, but I think the announcements person might have got her feelings hurt. I probably would have. The announcement she made this morning was pretty terse.

Another take on India

My experience in India was far from representative. My grandma always says "the things you worry about the most usually turn out the best." Well, that was what happened for me. If you'd like to read something that was more of a taste of what many others on the ship experienced please read Mary and Kelly's blog: http://johnston9494.blogspot.com

It's a great entry, though they've toned it down a bit for publication.

I would also like to do something I realize I should have done a month ago, which is introduce Kelly Johnston. Kelly knows everything there is to know about maps, he has a hilarious sense of humor, he likes to put jelly on a wide variety of dessert items, he can always be counted on to fix a busted stapler or lift a heavy box. Kelly does a lot of the blog authorship for johnston9494, and Mary is a tough editor so it's not an easy job.

I spend all the time I possibly can with Mary and Kelly. Mary is awesome and Kelly is awesome and together they are an unstopable powerhouse of awesomeness. They are the friendliest, most helpful, fun and charming couple on the ship. They are definitely in the top 1% of all couples I know and each would rank extremely high on my favorite people list individually as well.

Yours in adoring the Johnstons,
Erika

India is kind of a big deal

I was so anxious (as in standing on the gallows, not like Christmas morning) Saturday night before we came into Chennai, I seriously doubted that even half of us would make it out of there alive. I was expecting to see, pressed to the port gate the desperate and hollow eyed faces of last years semester at sea voyage students, the ones who had been swallowed by India. They would only be recognizable by their tattered SAS flag t-shirts, among the swarms of beggars, cripples, dying people, starving people, criminals and rapists straining against the fence to get their claws in us and eat our brains. Something between "Night of the Living Dead" and a Bollywood Musical. Here are some of the things we were told about India, either by officials or people who've been there before.
1. India is going to smell like a Mardi Gras port-o-potty
2. Practically every animal in India has rabies
3. Things you can get from mosquitos in India that can't be treated
a. dengue fever
b. chikungunya
4. Even getting India water on your tooth brush will give you explosive diarrhea.
5. Hepatitis, Polio, Typhoid Fever, Dysentery (and other things I only thought existed on Oregon Trail), you will probably catch one of them.
6. There's worms that get in your stomach, worms that get in your feet, and worms that get in your skin
7. Traffic is as crazy as in Vietnam only the vehicles don't weave around you, they just hit you.
8. The port security will try to demand bribes to let you back on the ship
9. The ship will be filled with immigration and customs people getting drunk and causing a ruckus.
10. You can't take taxis because they'll rob you, you can't take buses because they'll crash, you can't walk because you'll get run over, and don't ride the train because you'll get robbed.
11. You won't be able to walk a block without stepping over someone literally dying on the sidewalk.

All of this was further cemented by the article "Trying really hard to like India" which everyone should read, because it's pretty funny and very well written.

I was pretty much beside myself by the time we actually got to port.

If this was the first place you went on Semester at Sea, or the first third world port. It would probably rock your world. It's chaotic, and there's a lot of really crushing poverty and injustice. I saw some upsetting things, but I saw upsetting things in China and Hong Kong and Vietnam and Burma too. The poverty here is horrible 35% below poverty line and 50% illiteracy. The fact that people are STILL getting Polio anywhere is this world is abominable. 30,000 people die from rabies from India every year. But, India is just not that scary. It's a little scary, but not zombies scary. Don't be scared by India. But definitely drink bottled water, be liberal with the Deep Woods Off, and don't touch the monkeys. This really is good advice pretty much anywhere you go though. As for the smell, I don't know what they're talking about, it just smelled normal to me. The most egregious assault on my nostrils so far was the fish market in Ensenada Mexico. People go to the bathroom out in the open, but actually it's not all that big a deal. There's trash everywhere--true, but also there's feral goats so it evens out.

I had two big trips in India. First trip: Art of Living at the DakshinaChitra Center. Our trip got special permission to leave the ship before it was cleared. I was the first one in line and the first one to set foot in India. I made it to our motor coach and pulled back the curtains waiting to see just what was in store for me once we left the port. It was just a city. Lots of hustle and bustle, lots of shops and cars and people everywhere, but nothing crazier then New York City. I really really watched on our way out of town and we drove through a lot of city, but nothing at all scandalous. It was Sunday and we drove past St. Thomas Cathedral which is suppose to house the remains of the Apostle Thomas (Doubting Thomas) there were people coming out of church and doing Sunday sorts of things, going to the beach, taking the kids somewhere.

Our first stop was Mamallapuram, which is an ancient port town brimming over with amazing stone monuments and temples, most dating back to the first century. It was oh so hot here climbing around on the ancient rocks, and I was coming down with a cold so I don't think I fully appreciated just how amazing what I was seeing actually was. There were monkeys at Mamallapuram, the first I've encountered on the trip. I tried to give them a wide berth but these monkeys were not minding their own business. They were trying to take cokes and bottles of water away from the students, and evidently they'll take your camera away from you too if you aren't careful. There were hawkers galore following us all over the place, but they were less aggressive and had a wider variety of merchandise among them than I've encountered other places. One of the more popular items was a small set of 6 or 7 naughty Kama Sutra statuettes, which was a nice change of pace from the ratty post cards most hawkers push on you. The Pancha Rathas stop was where I saw the worst of the begging, naked children pointing at their mouths, a legless man. Horrifying. Stomach churning. Inconceivable. Yet, I have seen that sort of thing before in other ports. It in no way excuses it or makes it less shocking, but it's not something exclusive to India.

After Mamallapuram we went to the DakshinaChitra Center for our program. We received a very friendly welcome and red smear on the forehead and some tasty snacks. Our rooms were pretty basic, but had a western style toilet and a shower (mine had AC but some didn't). The DakshinaChitra is the Colonial Wiliamsburg of Southern India, authentic traditional homes from around the south were dismantled, restored and reassembled here. You can see pottery making demonstrations, basket weaving, glass blowing, etc. They have a little avenue where craftsman make and sell traditional crafts (more kama sutra here), a restaurant and a gift shop and facilities for programs like the one we were there for, Art of Living. Basically we joined a cult for a few days. A lot of the students were expecting 8 hours a day of power yoga, but it was a tiny bit of easy yoga in the mornings and meditation pretty much all the rest of the day. The guru is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, but I don't think he's THE Ravi Shankar. Though to these people he's definitely THE Ravi Shankar. He has adherents all over the world, and it was a pretty trippy experience. Half the students left after our first meditation session. The essential component to the Art of Living is this meditation where by following a rhythm on a cassette you repeatedly hyper ventilate yourself. I hallucinated a bit, had all kinds of weird memories surface, some people cried. Very weird. The second day some additional followers came and led us in some songs and dances and talked glassy eyed about the amazing loving presence of the guru. They served excellent vegetarian Indian food. Excellent. The staff was amazing, so friendly and helpful. We stayed two nights and got back to the ship pretty late the third day.

I had been feeling kind of worried about trip number two: Dalit Village Overnight. I had to be there ready to leave at 7:30AM the very next day after my transcendental experience. I was sick with a cold (Oh yeah, I was sick with a cold the whole time I was in India), exhausted, somewhat dreading the whole thing. So, for those who don't know Dalits are those formerly know as "untouchables," considered so foul by the social and religious hierarchy of India that they were considered outside the caste system all together. While, the caste system has been outlawed, officially, and discrimination based on caste in suppose to be illegal, in practice it is still a part of daily Indian life. The caste system is part of the Hindu religion, so it's very difficult considering most Indians are Hindus to essentially ban a part of the main religion that's been practiced for thousands of years. Our visit was sponsored by a program called the Bridge Educational Service Trust which is an NGO working to improve the conditions of the Dalit people. It's hard to get your head around the plight of these people as it's quite different than the racial and social discrimination we're familiar with. The Dalit people are encouraged to believe that they are in fact lowly and impure because of their unfortunate reincarnation as Dalit. Dalit's are attacked, raped, villages are burned and they believe they must accept this fate as part of their lot in life. The Bridge program works on job training and education but more than that it's aim is to improve the way the Dalit's think of themselves. To help them resist discrimination and feel they are worthy of basic human rights. Our first stop of this trip was at the Delta Training Center, a campus that primarily teaches a three year nursing curriculum to Dalit women. We were welcomed with flowers and singing and dancing and were given a brief talk about the purpose of the center and the plight of the Dalits, Though I would say it raised more questions than it really answered. One of the other programs at the center was a catering school, so our lunch was provided by the catering students. It was delicious and wonderful and included spaghetti and flan as well as many indian dishes served buffet style. After lunch we got to talk to the students who spoke enough English they could get their point across, and then we played throwball with the students. I didn't play because I was too occupied blowing my nose, but it's a game that looks exactly like volleyball except you catch the ball and throw it over the net. It was a great day, and would have been a swell experience in and of itself. But after that they loaded us up and drove us way the heck out into the country for an overnight stay in a village.

We could hear the drums and cheering well before we could see any of the commotion. When our buses got there (there were about 30 of us on three small buses) there were hundred of people playing drums and horns and dancing and cheering us. We had flowers draped around our necks and our heads anointed over and over. The buses let us off and the end of a road that went through the village and we were led by an exuberant parade through the village. Stopping every five yards to be anointed, they poured water at our feet and danced with us then we would move on. As we passed a home the women would come out and anoint our heads and the men would dance this wild exuberant dance. It took 40 minutes, at least, to get from one end of the village to the other (less than a quarter mile) where there was a stage. They had precariously wired lights along the path and the stage was brightly lit and there was a huge sound system, rented out for our visit obviously. We were given front row seats and the villagers filled in behind us. We were stopping and taking pictures, and then showing them to the villagers as we walked along. They would scream with delight when we showed them our cameras. The kids were all over us, and the women too touching our hair and grabbing our hands. This is what the experience would be like if they were going to take you up a mountain and throw you in the volcano. Kim (the library student who conned me into the trip) and I were in the back of the guest rows and the village women behind us patted us on the shoulders and touched our faces and our hair all night long. A bunch of the little boys were crawling all over us, kissing us and playing tricks on us. Every so often we would get handed a baby. The program started which was some semi-pro traditional dance and magic, lots of fire breathing and tricks with rings. Somewhere a long the way the power blew out and as we sat in the dark they got some boys to sing a song for us. While this was going on I noticed someone had climbed the electric pole and was up there in the dark rewiring things, someone came along with a giant torch and gave him a little light. He got it back on in maybe ten minutes or less, and no one was electrocuted. Then the children did dances for us which were mostly little Bollywood numbers they'd copied and rehearsed. Then they said, "ok your turn." This happens every time, and every time we get caught with our pants down and every time we bail out with the hokey pokey. Thank the lord for the hokey pokey. When your stuck in some remote village and are put on the spot to reciprocate with entertainment, bust out the hokey pokey. We did a triple encore hokey pokey, and a weak version of the Star Spangled Banner and a weaker version of Amazing Grace. I said we needed to do King of the Road (obviously, right?) but no one knew it but me.

After all this we went midway back down the village and climbed to the roof of their sort of community center. There we were led in a very pretty meditation involving little oil lamps, the point of which being, we all have a light that when joined together will light up the world. Then they said, "ok, this is where you're sleeping, good night." We unrolled our sleeping bags up on the roof and snuggled in. People were just dozing off when it started to rain, and they hustled a few of us inside, and a few went to sleep in the buses, a few stayed on the roof. I went inside and slept on the floor of the pantry with Alden, Zach Silver and the Laina (a student). I slept pretty good, actually. Probably got a pretty solid 7 hours. When we got up we marched out behind the village past the cows and goats and lined up along a little ravine with all the other villagers and had a poop and brushed our teeth. They were giving us coconut juice all night long which I think might have a bit of a laxative effect, FYI. Starting about 6:30 we had a tour of the village, we stopped at everyone's home. Mostly these were thatch roofed, dirt floor, no plumbing/electric. Some had concrete floors, a couple had power. We felt awkward and intrusive and suggested we didn't really need to go in EVERYONE'S house, but the guide said they would be offended if we went to some people's houses and not others. Kim had a polaroid and took pictures of the families in front of their homes, but ran out of film and felt horrible when people started posing for pictures. A polaroid is a great idea, but bring a TON of film. The we horsed around with the kids for awhile. More hokey pokey, london bridge's, head, shoulders, knees and toes, (by the way if anyone has any suggestions for good games like this that don't involve knowing people's names or sitting on the ground please tell me).

It suddenly started pouring rain, so we ran to the bus and were sort of unceremoniously out of there. Good thing I guess because we were all feeling heart broken to leave.

(I tried to write a little here about how that trip made me feel, but I can't seem to come up with anything that doesn't sound pukey and sentimental. This is a lack of creativity and writing skill, not a reflection on the power of the experience. I will say it was one of the most exhilarating and meaningful times of my life. I hope that you'll ask me to tell you about it when you see me in person.)

Chennai was flooding when we got back into town so I decided not to go back out. I found Mary and Kelly and Tim and Gwen Kittell and we rehashed our experiences in India. I also have talked to the Klein's and a few others. It sounds like India kicked a few asses on this trip. People who took the big trips to Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Varanassi, Taj Mahal had bad bad tour guide experiences. Suppose to go to the market and end up at their buddies high end rug shop instead. Constant aggressive hawkers. 3:00AM wake ups every morning. Sweaty train rides. Certainly not everyone had that experience, but those big trip people had a time of it.

Next on the agenda is a ten day ocean stretch on our way to Egypt (it definitely looks like we're going to get to go). I'm sure I'll be chomping at the bit to get off the ship when we get there, but I'm looking forward to some routine and the comforts of my cabin for awhile.

Final post on Myanmar

The last day here was wonderful. I went on the Twantay Excursion (Twantay is a small village 24 km from Yangon) it was originally suppose to be a trip of pottery viewing and buying with a short service visit to an orphanage thrown in for good measure. But the group that went the previous day said thumbs down to everything except the orphanage. So our trip was just a brief stop in a village to watch them make pottery, then off to the orphanage.

It was a private Buddhist orphanage and when we got there the children were shyly waving at us and smiling. The head monk, sort of an imposing, gruff type came down stairs into a courtyard and blew his whistle and the children came running from all over and lined up by sex and by age. There were girls and boys as old as 16 and a couple of tiny little boys that were only 2 or 3, and everything in between. They all had their palms pressed together in front of their faces, like prayer hands. They proceeded to sing us a few little songs, but it was somewhere sort of between singing and chanting really. So then it was our turn and we did "I'm a little teapot" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider." Then they did THEIR version of "I'm a little teapot" and totally blew us out of the water. The vibe was friendly yet awkward. They had arranged for us to hand out candy and clothing to the children, and this raised the level of awkwardness by a mile. They all still stood there with their hands pressed together in perfect rows while we walked around trying to guess sizes. Some seemed pleased, most seemed shy, some seemed sort of annoyed (it was very hot out). After everything was distributed they said "Ok, you can interact with the children now" but they were all still standing there at attention, and wouldn't break ranks until at last the head monk blew his whistle again. Then the fun started. I played volleyball with a few boys for 20 or 30 minutes and my wrists are red and bruised. People were carrying around the little ones and playing duck duck goose and red rover (red rover doesn't translate as well as duck duck goose). If it hadn't been so infernally hot, it would have been a perfect morning. The guide said many of the students parents had died or malaria or TB, but many had also been abandoned. Their chances of being adopted are practically zero as the government doesn't allow adoption until they've been orphaned 5 years. I don't know how much difference our visit really made, but at least it was something different for them maybe, a change of pace.

On ship time was early 2:00pm and we sailed around 4:00pm. The groups that went to Mandalay (I think it was about 200 people) all have adventure stories to tell. There was major flooding around Mandalay and a dam broke. It washed out a lot of roads and one group had to ford a river with their luggage, One group was stuck on a bus for 18 hours and the trip Mary and Kelly were on ended up taking a 6 hour boat ride down the Irrawaddy to Bagan to catch a flight out of there. Everybody's back safe and sound and I think mostly it was exciting more than terrifying.

Also I heard an exciting rumor, our beloved and foxy captain, Captain Roman, has been off the ship since Vietnam. "Family emergency," we were told. Au contraire says an informed source, evidently our captain is banned from captaining a ship in Myanmar since the last time he was here he had a fight with the river pilot. Even to the point of fisticuffs, perhaps. That has just turned his dashingness quotient to 11. We've had kind of a squirrelly Brit as the captain since Vietnam, but Captain Roman will be back in India. Sigh.

All in all I think people had a marvelous time here, the Burmese people really are so warm and wonderful it's hard not to be touched by them. I hope that they're on the verge of a real breakthrough and that the miracle the Vietnamese are talking about in their country now, will happen in some kind of way for them too. It's really hard to get your head around that sometimes. So often it seems that having enough jobs and adequate health care and access to education and clean water and clean food just go hand in hand with Westernization. The Burmese have a such a rich culture and history and really are such beautiful people I feel a twinge of regret when I think of traffic and fast food and department stores. But who am I to stand in the way of their Home Depot because I enjoy quaint third world charm. I don't know the answer, maybe there's a middle ground somewhere. I really don't know what I'm talking about.

So now we're off to India, two days and we're there. Bam!

Feel Better about Burma

I think this would also be a good tourism slogan for them: Feel Better about Burma. That's how I'm feeling tonight.


Alright, the dinner and dance performance was pretty darn fun. It was in this very cool faux barge in the middle of a lake. Delicious buffet that served all the favorites (mostly Thai food, I think). They have this awesome thing they serve after meals, fermented tea leaves with nuts. Sounds like hell, tastes like heaven. While we ate there were about 10 different traditional dances performed, some with fire. Then at the end there was about 30-45 minutes of group dancing with everyone, the power went out and then it came back one, then it went back out. They used branches to sprinkle us with water like on palm sunday. I'm glad I didn't wuss out. Tomorrow morning is my last Burma thing, Twantay excursion. An earlier group that did it says it was fun, and they evidently modified the program to give us more of the fun stuff and less of the boring stuff.

Burmese Days

In the days leading up to our docking in Burma, after hearing lectures on the political situation here, about the health situation, and the human rights situation there was a lot of talk on the ship that sounded like "Why are we coming here?" The democratically elected, but under house arrest leader of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, has strongly discouraged tourism. She doesn't want the legitimacy that tourism gives the current regime, and argues that very little money spent here actually winds up in the pockets of the people. The Burmese can be jailed or worse for talking to tourists about anything the junta deems questionable. You can't carry a laptop, cellphone, walkie talkie, pda into the country without it being confiscated because they think most westerners are spies and the the US is ready to launch an attack on them any day. There's a trade embargo against Burma and we aren't suppose to buy anything here anyway. The water here is so foul that we can't take on extra and are under water restriction until we get to India, so on top of everything else everyone stinks and has greasy hair.

Our port in about an hours drive down a bumpy, narrow road to Yangon. There's a shuttle every two hours from the ship to town and back again. When you're on the shuttle to Yangon here's what you see out the window, women and children hauling rocks beside the road, flooded markets with people walking around in chest high water, golden and jewel encrusted giant pagoda, stray dogs, garbage piles, giant golden and jewel encrusted Buddah. All Burmese men are expected to enter a Buddhist monastery at some point in their life, and there are many many many monks that you see out and about. Many of the schools here are Buddhist and the students learn meditation along with all of their other studies. So if you're educated it was probably a Buddhist education. Things just don't add up here. There tourist slogan should be "Myanmar: Land of Contradictions."

We're very restricted in where we can go, and what we can do, and that makes me and a lot of people quite reticent. The amount of hassle and interrogation just to get out of the port is a little nerve wracking. One of our students went to a touristy place on her own, and ended up in a very spooky experience trying to get back to the ship and ended up having to walk more than a mile in the wee morning hours down a pretty sketchy road. Most people went to Mandalay and Bagan either on their own or with the group. I figured I've never been to Burma before so anything that I see will be something different. But I sort of see the value in the structure of an SAS death march tour now that I'm at loose ends here.

The abandoned colonial feel is similar to Vietnam, and the Burmese people are warm and fun (though they will openly point and laugh at you, it doesn't seem mean spirited). There's a lot of English spoken, no big surprise, I guess. The main attraction here are the Buddhist pagodas and and other religious monuments. They are all magnificent, golden, shining things with precious jewels and neon. Tacky, you'd say, if they weren't so dazzling. There are swarms of Burmese at all of them praying and meditating and making offerings. Our tour guide for the city orientation was a Baptist, though. The markets are bustling and colorful but much less hectic than in Vietnam. I'm really in a quandary about spending money here, on the one hand embargoes don't hurt the people in power and I would like some of my money to go to the people here who need it so badly, but Suu Kyi has said that all of the tourist money goes directly to the junta. I've bought some things from kids in the street and made donations at temples but I don't know how much further I really want to go.

So basically here's how I've spent my time in Burma. Day One: City Orientation, Shwedagon Pagoda, Suli Pagoda, Market, Lunch, Reclining Buddah, History Museum, Strand Hotel Lobby. Day Two: Walk around the port, read "Time Travelers Wife," cocktail hour, bed. Day Three: Burmese Cuisine cooking class, finish "Time Travelers Wife," bed. Day Four (today): Updating blog and this evening a traditional dinner and dance performance. Day Five (tomorrow): Looking at local pottery and riding in the back of trucks (I would back out of this but I'm one of the trip leaders).

Really, though, I probably needed the break. I've not been feeling myself lately (sad and harried and anxious) and maybe just a few no pressure days will get me back in the swing of things. There's not much opportunity for down time and not a lot of privacy either just in general on the ship and when we're in port that's just amplified. I don't know how the people who are going to Mandalay and Bagan here and then turning around in India and doing Delhi, Agra, Jaipur are going to manage that.

Four students were "disembarked" in Myanmar for various reasons. As far as I know this is the first time on this voyage that anyone has gotten kicked off (a student left in Japan for medical reasons). Evidently in the past when rich kids have gotten kicked off they've just followed the ship by plane and met up with their friends in port. That may have only happened once, but it's part of SAS legend. Mary and I are continuing to plug away at the re-barcoding project. I'd say we're about a third of the way through. We've been helping more students with accessing UVa databases, but it's still a very small number. I'm going to make a big publicity push between India and Egypt and try to set up some times to teach drop-in library instruction classes. The difficulty is that the internet is so unpredictable and trying to use screen shots and power point just isn't effective at all. The best time to schedule classes would be 5:00AM when no one is online, but I don't think I'd get any takers.

Pics from Vietnam

I've been trying to write captions for these pictures, but blogger keeps messing it up. So I've decided to just go for the collage effect instead. Enjoy.

Vietnam at last

Longtime, no blog, I know. After I got back from Vietnam I was pretty ill for a couple of days. There's a bit of disease going around on the ship, lot's of sick stomachs, pink eye, sniffles etc. There's a couple of people under quarantine as a matter of fact (a rumor of dengue fever that I think is just that [rumor]). I'm was feeling better today; the crew had another barbeque for us and I ate a lot more than I should have and that's got me feeling a little upset again. I'm going to take it easy at dinner. This would be a good week to hole up in my room and rest in the evenings, but there's something going on every night this week. They're having mixers in the faculty/staff lounge for all of the "seas" (residence halls) and we're pretty much expected to at least put in an appearance. Then there's some sort of "Malacca Straits" party tomorrow.

The ship is sailing through pirate infested waters right now, and they've enlisted passengers for a "pirate watch" where they're training volunteer look-outs and issuing certificates. I'm not sure how much of that is the crew pulling our leg and how much of that is genuine. But at any rate Kelly is up on deck right now having his turn on duty.

There's no class today, and the students are pretty much head down over their studies. The library has been packed today, and pretty busy with students doing more than borrowing travel guides. Which is good to see.

I'm not going to write a long blog on Vietnam, I've decided. If I keep waiting until I have the time and inclination to write a long blog it'll be December before I get it done. I have a lot of great photos that I'll post when the internet is running quickly, and I'll give you a wrap up on it now.

The first day in Vietnam I went on the SAS sponsored city orientation. They drove us around Saigon (the locals call the old part of Ho Chi Minh Saigon) and we saw a nice Buddhist Temple, had a killer lunch at a swanky place, went on a rush tour through the history museum (which was sort of odd, but in a gorgeous building), and saw the Reunification Palace. This is the place where tanks crashed through the gate in 1975. It's still mostly the same as it was on that day and is now and eerily abandoned monument to.... communism? maybe? The basement is a bunker with a war room and tiny stainless steel offices with typewriters. It was almost like a movie set.

The next day was my Mekong Delta Overnight trip. We drove about 4 hours south of Saigon where they loaded us in kind of junky flat bottom boats and sputtered us up the river. We stopped at a few places: a family home/business where the entire clan makes puffed rice bread, a really nice garden where they served us snake wine and fresh fruit and a brick factory. It was really quite amazing to see how people live their lives on the river. We spent the night in a really nice hotel in Can Tho that had the deepest and most luxurious bathtub. Dinner was at the fanciest place in Can Tho and we had this great Vietnamese-French fusion dinner. There was a good tomato soup and some creamy pork dish. So good. We set out first thing in the morning to see the nearby floating market. I was imagining canoes filled with fruit and fish in a congested noisy knot, but the boats all had outboard motors and were fairly large with a wide variety of food including cokes and pringles. (For some reason pringles seem to be the ubiquitous choice for potato chips in South East Asia. You can find Lays and Cheetos occasionally, but by far the most common chip is pringles. There's almost nowhere you CAN'T find pringles). After that we went to a farm where the family was growing herbs and rice and watched them working and preparing for market. Then we hiked for about a mile through slippery mud and rice patties, I was completely covered with mud from my knees down. The boat captains cleaned our feet and then tried to sell us bottles of water that had obviously been filled up from a well somewhere. We passed.

It was another busy day the next day with a trip to the Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi Tunnels. Cao Dai is a local religion which was revealed to it's founder through the ouija board. It's Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism with a sprinkling of Christianity, Islam and Bahai. Also Victor Hugo is involved as some sort of reincarnated guru. It's kind of bizarre. The temple we saw is the holy see of the religion, the vatican of Cao Dai and we observed a portion of their midday service, which involved music and chanting. It was colorful and peaceful. After another great lunch, we headed for the Cu Chi tunnels. This is an expansive tunnel system just outside Saigon where the VC would launch attacks on the US and South Vietnamese and then disappear seemingly into thin air. It was raining and muddy and the tunnels were sort of creepy and upsetting. There's an opportunity to go down into the tunnels in a portion that's been widened for fat Western tourists. You can bend completely at the waist and stay on your feet, but my legs got so tired I had to crawl along on hands and knees. It's completely dark in the tunnel except for one point where a tiny Vietnamese park ranger was scrunched into a hole with a flash light. I slipped in the mud outside the bathroom and had to ride back to Saigon in wet muddy pants.

Except for the bathrooms at Cu Chi tunnels and at the ferry station at Can Tho the bathrooms in Vietnam are very nice. Almost all of them are western, clean and have lovely hand soap. The bathrooms at the Rex Hotel are particularly nice, and conveniently located. While you're enjoying they're excellent toilet facilities you can also have an asian daiquiri, which is fruity and minty and has a lychee in the bottom of the glass.

Everyone rides a motorcycle or motorscooter and stoplights, signs, and road stripes are treated as suggestions. You can get a pedicure or dentistry done on the street. Coffee is awesome, they brew it directly into your mug. If you don't like/aren't good at haggling don't go to the market because you'll get ripped off BIG time. There's plenty of department stores with merchandise that has fixed price, and you can get that 10 times cheaper than you could ever haggle and price at the market. But you should go check out the market just for the experience.

Vietnam is about to take off in a big way, one of my tour guides told us that he had tried to escape from Vietnam three times and had been captured and put in jail. Today, Vietnam is "like a miracle" to him. His brother went to Thailand and learned a way to drain soccer fields, now he's rich. If you can think of something to get rich in Vietnam, now's the time to make your move.