Last Days

A feeling of nostalgia has settled on the ship as we make our way to our last foreign port, Puerto Quetzel, Guatemala. It is also exam time and the students are busy studying and the professors are busy grading papers and administering exams. Global Studies is complete and the final exam has been graded. The MV Explorer has been our home for nearly five months and soon it will be time to pack up and vacate the vessel for the next group of voyagers. We have been living in a community of people where we eat, socialize, work and exercise together. It has been a supportive community as we study and travel around the globe. Together we have endured rough seas and have been dazzled by beautiful sunsets and rainbows.

The feeling of sadness is tempered by the adventure that we will have in Guatemala. Some voyagers are planning to hike a volcano, travel to Mayan ruins or rest at a resort. I am excited because Mariah, my daughter, will be meeting us in Antigua and will sail back to the States with us. I look forward to showing off the ship and spending some quality time with her.

We leave Guatemala on April 30th and have one more study day and one more day of final exams. Things will get hectic in the Textbook Center for a few days while we buy back textbooks and pack them up for shipping. On May 3rd we transit the Panama Canal. All of you back home will be able to log on to the web cams along the Canal and watch us go through the locks. In addition the M.I.C.E. group will have one final concert on the bow of the ship. This will be a live feed to WTJU, a community radio station at the University of Virginia. You will be able to listen to this on the Internet. I will send more information on that later.

Here are a few photos from our Pacific transit.

Jogging on the bow














Coming in out of the wind















A red footed booby resting near the top of the mast

Japan

April 10, 2009
From Reggie and Georgia

Japanese drummers greeting the ship

We arrived in Kobe, Japan,( home of Kobe beef-we did not eat any) on April 6th and departed from Yokohama, Japan on the 10th. I purchased Japan Rail Passes for Reggie, Jackson and myself in Hong Kong, so that we could travel about Japan during our brief stay. As soon as the ship was cleared by the immigration authorities, the three of us found our way to the train station and caught the shenkansen (high speed bullet train) to Hiroshima. We visited Peace Memorial Park which commemorates the first atomic bomb used by humankind on August 6, 1945. The bomb exploded at an altitude of 1,980 feet and we stood directly under that spot, an area known as the hypocenter. Over 100,000 people lost their lives on that day and the Memorial is dedicated to them and to the survivors. There is an epitaph at the eternal flame written in Japanese which is translated as “Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil.”

The visit to the museum was quite sobering. Hiroshima is now a vibrant and beautiful city and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, a stark contrast to this horrifying moment in history. We met some volunteer guides, citizens of Hiroshima, who donate their time to the many visitors, by providing guided tours around the immediate area located below the hypocenter. We even met a survivor….he is classified as such because his mother was 4 months pregnant with him at the time of the blast. Both of his parents, in spite of the enormous doses of radiation, managed to survive into their 90’s. We asked him why the Japanese are not bitter and why there is not hatred for the Americans. His explanation, “We are Buddhists, We are sorry, Thankyou, We love you.” I have found this to be one of the more remarkable aspects of the human character that has shown up in different countries along the way, such as South Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia and China. Many people have endured great suffering because of the actions of various western countries and yet they forgive and they move on.













This is a model of Hiroshima showing how it looked before the bomb and immediately after the bomb. The T shaped bridge was the target. The actual hypocenter was the street to the left of the green dome building the remains of which are standing today. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is centered in the arch of the Peace Memorial above.


We had dinner in Hiroshima at an okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is a sort of Japanese crepe filled with cabbage, meat of your choice, and topped with an egg. You sit down at a counter in an okonomiyaki stall, which has a flat iron surface (griddle) for cooking along its entire length. The cook pours out some batter to form a crepe, while cooking a big fistful of finely shredded cabbage, bean sprouts, bacon, and your choice of an additional meat or seafood. When the crepe is cooked, the cabbage is placed on top of it and it is flipped over. When the meat is done, the crepe is flipped again, the meat is placed on top and an egg is broken over the entire stack. Once the heat of the stack has cooked the egg, the whole thing is shoveled over to you on a large spatula, and you eat with your choice of several hoisin- or Worchestershire-type sauces. It’s quite tasty and cheap. There is a building just off a long shopping/walking street in Hiroshima with about 6-8 of these okonomiyaki stalls on the second floor. We picked one at random and had a beer as we watched our dinner being prepared. After dinner, we took the shinkansen back to Kobe to spend the night aboard the MV Explorer.

On Tuesday, April 7, we packed our bags and set out by shinkansen for a two-night stay in Kyoto. Kyoto is one of the most historic and lovely cities in Japan. For more than one thousand years, it served as Japan’s capital and home to its emperors. Much of it was spared from bombing in World War II, so many ancient temples and buildings remain. It has an excellent subway system, making it very easy to get around. On our arrival, we had a petit dejeuner in a French-style restaurant and then took the subway north to find our lodgings, the ryokan Kohro, near the intersection of Rokkokuku dori (dori = street) and Sakaimachi dori. Ryokans are traditional Japanese hotels, with tatami mats on the floor, sliding wooden panels covered with rice paper as room dividers, and low, coffee table-style tables that require you to sit on the floor. When you are ready to go to bed, management sends the ladies to lay out futons on the floor. Georgia, Jackson, and I shared the room, with Jackson having some complaints about the snoring.

We settled our luggage and headed off to see the city. Late March to early April is peak cherry blossom time in Kyoto, and indeed, Kyoto is the place where the Japanese flock to see the cherry blossoms, with a passion that gives their journey a pilgrimage quality. We first went to see the Nijo Castle. It was about a 20-minute walk from our hotel. The castle was built in the early 1600’s by one of the shoguns who ruled then. The largest building in the castle, called Ninomaru Palace served as the official palace of the shogun and as the building where he received visiting samurai coming to show their respects. It consists of a series of rooms within a large wooden structure. The wooden floors were purposefully built to be very squeaky, so no one could sneak up on the shogun or his bodyguards. They call them the nightingale floors. The gardens around the palace were in full spring glory, with the cherry and weeping cherry trees in leading roles – truly exquisite, especially when used as principal decorative elements in carefully crafted gardens with ponds and brooks of flowing water. After our tour, we took the subway over to the Gion district, east of the Kamo-gawa River. It is an old area, with little streets and a pedestrian way along a small tributary of the river. Cherry trees in bloom were abundant here as well. We had lunch in a small restaurant and then walked back to our hotel, crossing the bridge over the Kamo-gawa at Shijo dori and turning immediately north on Pontocho dori, which in the old days was the scene of nightlife and debauchery, but now is lined with boutique restaurants offering every conceivable cuisine. At the end of Pontocho, we turned left and made our way back to the hotel, with a short detour to see the arcade-covered Nishiki food market.

At the hotel, I convinced Jackson that he needed to try the Japanese hot bath. The hot bath is located in the basement of our ryokan. What you do is take off your clothes and put on a light kimono and slippers. You then go down the elevator and through the lobby to the stairs and down them to the basement. Men and women have separate hot baths. However, they are common baths and any number of persons can be in them at the same time. You enter the bath outer room, hang up your kimono, store your towel in a locker, and then enter the bath room. In it are 12 bathing stations, each with a wooden stool, a wooden pail, a shower head, soap, shampoo, and conditioner. The protocol is to sit down on your little wooden stool and rinse yourself thoroughly with hot water. Then you get up and get in the hot tub, which is about 6 feet wide and 10 feet long. After immersing yourself in the hot water for a while, you climb out, resume your position on the wooden stool, suds yourself up, shampoo your head, rinse yourself off, and climb back in the hot tub/pool for another pleasant soak in the quite hot water. Fortunately, Jackson and I were the only two people using the bath at that time. Otherwise, he might have thought better of the idea! It was very relaxing. We went back up stairs, got dressed, and when Georgia returned and dressed, we went out for dinner at a small, family-style restaurant. Noodles are always part of dinner in Japan, more so than rice. There are two kinds: udon (made from white wheat) and soba (made from buckwheat). You eat them with chopsticks; try that sometime – the rascals are slippery and elusive and maybe 3 feet long, much longer than noodles have any right to be. We then had an ice cream dessert. Back at the ryokan, our futons were laid out, so we lay down and watched a Japanese baseball game on TV. The Japanese are really enthusiastic about their baseball, with cheerleaders and noisemakers and much glee. The game we watched was won in the bottom of the ninth by the home team Tigers, coming from 7 runs down, and ending with a double to right field that scored the tying and go-ahead runs. It was the best baseball game I have seen in years, no doubt fueled by the energy of the fans. Jackson and I talked about it for 30 minutes before going off to sleep.

Wednesday, April 8, we arose to greet the arrival of the futon removers, who came in and stowed our futons in our closet and then along came our breakfast, delivered by a Japanese lady in a kimono. We had ordered two western breakfasts and one Asian breakfast; the western one was eggs, croissants, and coffee. I ate the Asian one, which consisted of miso soup, some seaweed, a heated water pot with chunks of tofu floating in the hot water, fish (salmon), and rice, plus hot tea. I traded the pot of tea to Jackson for his cup of coffee. After breakfast, we went down the street and around the corner to another hotel where we rented bicycles for the day for about $10 (1,000 yen) each. We rode our bicycles first to a Starbucks-type coffee shop, where we savored a fine double espresso. We spent the morning riding upstream along the Kamo-gawa river and then following the Takano-gawa branch north from where it joins the Kamo-gawa. It was a splendid, sunshiny day, warm and spring-like. Groups of pre-school age children crowded the path along the river; others played along the river banks, which were festooned with cherry trees in full flower. Before noon, we turned around and headed down to where Kamo-ohashi dori crosses the river. We rode along this street, which is where the University of Kyoto is located, to reach the head of the Philosopher’s Pathway. This walkway follows a small canal/tributary of the Kamo-gawa and its length is lined with cherry trees whose branches form an arcade of white blossoms over the canal. It was full of people; it is the major tourist attraction in Kyoto when the cherry blossoms are at their peak. A light breeze was blowing, and cherry petals floated gently like snowflakes down onto the path and into the canal where they formed a white fleet drifting with a slow majesty on the current. We could not ride our bikes because of the throng, but had to dismount and walk with them.

Our next tourist stop was to see the formal Japanese garden at the Heian temple. But first, lunch at a little Japanese restaurant where we had noodle dishes and beer; mine was topped with pork cutlet, which is one of the culinary surprises of Japan. I visited the Heian Shrine with my sister, Elizabeth, many years ago around the same time. The garden is quite amazing and layed out beautifully around reflecting pools. There are hundreds of weeping cherry trees at the entrance. The garden was set up for night time viewing with floodlights and power cables and so detracted from the daytime visit which we had.




We saw many Japanese women in traditional kimonas and learned that during this season, they get into the shrines for free if they dress this way. It was an added benefit for us.

After leaving there we rode over to the park which is the site of the Imperial Palace where we rested before returning the bikes. That evening we had another traditional Japanese meal of udon noodles sitting cross legged at a low table. It was quite difficult bending our western bodies into the shape necessary for occupying such small spaces, while juggling soup and noodles with chopsticks. Slurping noodles is not considered rude in Japan and is actually about the most successful technique for consuming such fare. Of course the beautiful day could not end without another round of Japanese style bathing at our ryokan before bedding down on the futons so neatly laid out on the tatami mats. This round of bathing was more dismaying for Jackson, since the bath was also being used by some Japanese people – a man and his 3-year old son and an older man. Fortunately, they didn’t linger and we soon had it to ourselves.

The next day we departed from Kyoto and took an early morning train to nearby Nara, a popular tourist destination for the Japanese, and the site of the first permanent capital of Japan. There are many famous temples there which are located in a large park surrounded by a fence. Deer roam freely within the park and are considered “divine messengers”. They will eat deer cookies right out of your hand. We visited Todaiji Temple which is an enormous wooden structure that houses the Daibutsu, a huge, 50-feet high bronze statue of Buddha, consisting of 437 tons of bronze and 286 pounds of pure gold. Its head has been replaced twice due to an earthquake and another calamity.

We returned to the train station after a leisurely stroll around the park and lunch in a small downtown “mom and pop” type of restaurant. Japan has taken public transportation seriously. It is so convenient to travel this way, that it is a wonder that they also lead the world in sensible automobile production. To my inexperienced eye, it appears that you can take a train to almost anywhere and then find it easy to ride local transportation in the form of buses, trolleys or subways with frequent stops. An added convenience is that all of the train stations have lockers where you can stow luggage or backpacks while visiting the city. We liberated our luggage and boarded the next shinkansen to Yokohama. These trains work better than clocks. They are frequent and always arrive at the very second scheduled. On the platform there are signs designating where to stand for which car and the train always stops at precisely that point. The passengers have exactly 60 seconds to get off or get on. People do not bustle or elbow each other and are particularly deferential to the elderly who seem to be just as adept at finding their way around these massive hubs of transportation. I developed an extreme case of train and subway envy. We had a smooth ride to Yokohama and were treated to a rare sight. Mt. Fuji, which is often shrouded in clouds or fog, was completely visible from our train window. We stared at the mountain for as long as we could until the bullet train swept into the next long tunnel.

Arriving in Yokohama exactly on time and for the first time, we had to figure out what subway line to take to find the ship which had relocated from Kobe to Yokohama during our absence. By this point Jackson had become quite adept at figuring out the amount of fare to purchase and then working the coin operated machines that spit out the tickets. We found the ship, our home, deposited our luggage and then hustled out to Yokohama’s version of Chinatown for dinner. After a good night’s sleep we were back in the subway station to transfer to the train station to use our rail passes one last time. We spent several hours in Tokyo long enough to be impressed by the crowds and to pine for Kyoto. We had lunch….more noodles and made our way back to the ship.

Our Asian whirlwind tour was over and we sailed out of Yokohama Harbor at 9PM with 8 glorious days at sea ahead before arriving in Honolulu.

More scenes from the Philosopher's Walk

China Contrasts

April 3, 2009
a joint effort

Here’s the latest episode in our travelogue as we make our way around the globe. Our most recent stops were China and Japan. We arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday, March 29, a cold, misty morning for us after a month of tropical weather. Hong Kong is one of the most beautiful ports in the world; its sheltered geography and ease of access explains its centuries-old prominence in international commerce.

Today, under Chinese rule, it is a very modern, vibrant city. We were berthed in Kowloon, right next to the Star Ferry line that shuttles commuters from Kowloon, on the mainland, to Hong Kong Island. We stepped off the ship into a very upscale mall of luxury brand boutiques, with a four-star hotel anchoring the shops. Our first day was not free for the usual tourist exploration. The president of the University of Virginia, John Casteen, was in Hong Kong to meet the ship as our representative for announcement of a joint venture between Semester At Sea and the C. Y. Tung Foundation. C. Y. Tung founded the Oriental Overseas Cargo Shipping Company, a major international shipping company. He was a prominent benefactor of Semester At Sea. C. Y. Tung passed on, leaving his two sons, C. H. and C. C., to continue the family business. C. H. has become a very powerful figure in contemporary China. When China resumed control of Hong Kong in 1997 after 156 years of British rule, C. H. was chosen to be the first Executive of Hong Kong and was subsequently elected to a second term. C.C. is the C.E.O. of O.O.C.S. (a terse, but information-laden string of acronyms, don’t you think?). On our first day in Hong Kong, Georgia and I were part of a group of 50, mostly Chinese, people invited by C. H. and C.C. for lunch at the Ocean Club, their home for entertaining clients and dignitaries. Ocean Club is situated on Deep Water Bay, next to Repulse Bay, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. Imagine having all the money in the world and an eye for spectacular sea views where you might build a luxurious home – that is Ocean Club. The lunch was extravagant and speeches were made. We traveled there and back in a chauffeured limousine minivan with John Casteen. That night, we held a banquet aboard the M.V. Explorer for selected Chinese guests, Semester At Sea VIPs, and the UVA family on the ship. This hullabaloo was all part of the celebrations surrounding announcement of a new joint Semester At Sea – C. H. Tung Foundation Program in Sino-U.S. Relations that will sponsor Chinese faculty and students in future voyages.

Reggie with President Casteen and Dan and Anne Kinney who are shipboard faculty from the University of Virginia.

The next day, Monday, March 30, Georgia, Jackson, Jon Kastendiek, Sarah Swank, and I set out to explore Hong Kong. We took the Star Ferry over to Hong Kong Island and the peak tram up to the top of Victoria Peak for a grand view of the spectacular surroundings. We then had lunch over on the south side of the island at a commercial district called Stanley.

This photo was taken from The Peak in Hong Kong. If you look very closely you can see the MV Explorer with its bright blue hull, docked in the Harbor below.

We returned to the ship, got our luggage, and took a taxi out to Hong Kong International Airport for a flight on China Southern Airlines to Guilin, China. (Guilin is pronounced “Gwey-lin”). “Gui” is the Chinese word for osmanthus trees and “lin” is forest. These trees flower in the fall and the tiny blossoms are very fragrant and are used to make tea and liquor. Guilin is in Guangxi province. Guangxi is home to the Zhuang people, the largest minority in China. (The largest ethnic group in China (most of its people) is the Han.) We arrived after an hour’s flight on an Airbus 319 and were met at the airport by our China Highlights tour guide, Lifang Lu, a 27-year old English major, and our driver, Mr. Wang. Lifang Lu uses the English name “Anne”. Our vehicle is a 9-passenger minivan made in China by the Jin Sheng (“Golden Prosperity”) auto company. One of the first Chinese expressions we learned from Anne was “mah mah hu hu”, literally “horse horse tiger tiger”, but actually an idiom meaning “so-so”. She used it in reference to the food at our hotel, the Guilin Eva Inn. Anne took us to the hotel to drop off our bags and then to a ‘walking street’ or pedestrian-mall type avenue, where we had a dinner of chicken with noodles, sort of like Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, plus the local beer, The tab for the five of us was 45 Rinmenbi (a word that translates literally as “the People’s currency”). The units for Rinmenbi (RMB) are given in yuans. One RMB = 1 yuan. One U.S. dollar equals 7.4 yuan (RMB), so dinner and drinks for 5 cost about $6.

Tuesday, March 31 dawned misty and foggy. We had breakfast on the top floor of our hotel, with views of the surrounding city and countryside. The breakfast offerings centered around typical Chinese fare, of course, which meant rice, dumplings, soups, and eggs, though the coffee wasn’t too bad. Our day was centered around a boat cruise down the Lijiang (Li River), the real tourist attraction for the Guilin area. The Lijiang is a branch of the Pearl River, which runs down to meet the sea at Hong Kong. This region of China is characterized by gumdrop-shaped karst mountains, and drawings of these hills are a prominent theme in Chinese art. A rendition of these hills adorns the back of the 20 Yuan RMB note. The boat trip is an ideal way to travel among them and enjoy their beauty, which we did, even though the day grew more foggy and rainy with each passing hour. At the end of our four-hour, 50-km trip down the river was Yangshuo, a small town that had been transformed into a tourist market, with coffee shops, souvenir stands of all sorts, silk merchants, and assorted other goods, including knock-off watches. I got two knock-off Rolexes, one for Jackson and one for me, for 100 RMB. We also got a great cup of espresso in Yangshuo.

This man is wearing a coat of feathers and is holding a stick with cormorants perched at either end. In this area cormorants are used for fishing. The cormorants have rings around their necks to keep them from swallowing the fish they catch and one of their legs is tethered to the boat by a string so they cannot get away. When a fish is caught, it is pulled out of the cormorants beak and deposited in a bucket. We watched a demonstration of this process and were amused by a cormorant that kept climbing into his owner's bucket to reclaim the fruit of his efforts.















Above: Each tour boat that plies the Li River has a full galley on board. They served a huge buffet of various Chinese dishes including one offering of snake wine which we did not try. This wine was fermenting in a large jar which also contained a pickled snake.

Above right: We found entrepreneurs in Asia to be quite resourceful when it came to marketing their wares. The man in this photo is no exception. He paddled this small bamboo raft up to the swiftly moving tour boat, tied up and is now selling curios to tourists located on the bottom deck of the tour boat.

That night, we had dinner at a popular Guilinese restaurant that was full of local people. The restaurant has hundreds of different dishes, and patrons walk around with a small card, point to a dish they want, and waiters write it down on the small card. After you have made your selections, you return to your table and the dishes are delivered. The substance of many of the dishes was a mystery not solved by inspection, but we ate them anyway and they were tasty. Some were rather spicy. Jackson made a big hit with the young girl waitresses when I sent him to select some desserts, and his confusion and cuteness amused the girls to the point where they were doubled over with giggles. There is not much more delightful than a gaggle of giggling Asian girls. The dinner tab for Georgia, Jackson, and me was 55 RMB. After dinner, we rushed over to the Lijiang Theatre to see the Dragon’s Nationality dance performance of a series of ethnic minority Chinese groups doing their traditional dances. It was an extraordinary performance, with the added highlight that the dancers dragged Jon up on the stage from his aisle seat and into their performance. Jon was a big hit as the reluctant, smiling, round-eyed hoofer. The dragon is a recurring symbol in Chinese culture. The Chinese view the dragon as their ancestor. Any important thing has a dragon associated with it. Emperors were believed to be the sons of dragons. Today the dragon remains a key male symbol and the snake is considered a dragon. The female symbol is the phoenix.

The next morning (Wednesday, March 31), we were driven to the nearby ‘pile of silk’ or ‘silk brocade’ mountain, one of the gumdrop hills in Guilin. Guilin has two rivers running through it – the Lijiang (or Li River) and the Peach Blossom River. We climbed up the many stone steps, stopping to enjoy the views. It is a big tourist attraction, and many Chinese tourists were there. Quite a few of them not only wanted to take our photo, but to be photographed with us. Indeed, it was a common occurrence for us in China to have people photographing us or asking to be in photographs with us.

We surmised that Jon's popularity in part might have been due to his stage debut on the previous evening.

We then visited Reed Flute Cave. As you might expect, given the karst landscape around Guilin and its fundamental limestone composition, there are a number of caverns in the area, the largest of which has been transformed into a tourist attraction. China has really transformed the Guilin region into a tourist mecca, with this place being a Chinese version of Luray Caverns in Virginia, only, quite frankly, better. It is easily as large and as colorfully illuminated.

In the afternoon, we went to Jiangtou village, a small and ancient village out in the country about an hour’s drive north of Guilin. The wooden structures there are 800 years old. The town was founded by Zhou Dunyi, a poet-philosopher during the Song dynasty. Many of China’s leaders trace their origins to Jiangtou, including Zhou Enlai (known better to us as Chou En Lai), ally of Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao) and the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China, from 1949 to 1976. It was a genuine glimpse of pre-modern, pre-autocratic capitalism China, a look at peasant life in a village set among rice paddies and dirt lanes.

Our last day in Guilin (Thursday, April 2), we visited the Guilin zoo to see the pandas. Goodbyes to Ann, our guide, were poignant. We all fell in love with her. She was sweet, patient, smart, and pleasant, with a charming sense of humor. She taught me the meaning of a number of Chinese characters. I constantly pelted her with “What does this one mean?” questions and she answered them patiently. One of my favorites is the Chinese character for “art” – it composed of two other Chinese characters, one meaning “beauty”, the other, “mathematics”. Thought provoking, n’est pas?

We were dropped off at the Guilin airport and caught a 1:15 PM flight to Shanghai aboard China Eastern Airlines, arriving about 3:30 PM. The M.V. Explorer had sailed from Hong Kong to Shanghai while we were off in Guilin, and we took a taxi from the airport to the ship. It took a bit of a wrangle to convince the Shanghai taxi driver and his airport colleagues that all 5 of us were used to cramming into one car with our luggage. After a few blocks, he stopped the car to get out and look at his tires. When he got back in, I said “flat?” and he looked at me in consternation, shook his head, and then laughed and said “yes”.

The formal announcement of the Semester At Sea – C. Y. Tung Foundation Program in Sino-U.S. Relations was made that night at a very large banquet aboard our ship, with C. H. and C. C. Tung in attendance. I gave a brief talk on the Jefferson’s interest in public education and the founding of the University of Virginia,the Academical Village as a model for Semester At Sea, and global education. Afterwards, C. H. Tung came up and gave me a big smile and shook my hand warmly.

Friday, April 3, I had a scheduled Faculty-Directed Practicum (FDP) for my nutrition class, and about 30 of us met up with Shengping Zhang (“Ping”), my teaching assistant in BIOL 106: Nutrition for several years. We took a chartered bus and Ping led us through several local Shanghai markets, where students took notes on the many items available so they could write up their field reports. We all then had lunch at the South Beauty restaurant, on the 10th floor of a modern building on the east side of the Hungpo River, which runs through Shanghai. The Hungpo is a tributary of the Yangtze River, one of the two great rivers in China (the other is the Yellow River). It was a magnificent, though very expensive meal, with an array of more than a dozen different dishes of all sorts of food. After returning to the ship by bus, we gave Ping a tour of the M.V. Explorer, and then she, Georgia, Jackson, and I had a last few hours to visit one of the shopping districts of Shanghai, where I bought some red silk lanterns. The M.V. Explorer and us departed for Japan at 2000.

Two days later, on Monday, April 6,we arrived in Kobe, Japan.

Indochina

March 28, 2009
from Reggie

A lot of water has passed under the ship since last I wrote you about our experiences. We have traveled across the Bay of Bengal region of the Indian Ocean, through the Nicobar Island archipelago and into the Andaman Sea region of the Indian Ocean, then down the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, stopping in Singapore for bunker. Singapore is a city-state, one of three in the world (the other two are the Vatican City in Rome and Monaco in France). We did not go ashore in Singapore, but continued on into the Gulf of Thailand en route to the eponymous country. We have visited Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and in visiting them, we have learned a lot about what used to be called Indochina. As we met the people of these countries and had an opportunity to get to know them a bit, we became impressed by their innate cheerfulness, friendliness, and kindness. We arrived in Thailand on Sunday, March 15 at Laem Chabang, a commercial port just built in 1991 to serve the needs not only of Thailand, but also Laos, Cambodia, and other neighboring countries. It is a short distance (30 minutes by taxi) from Pattaya, a seaside city that was a sleepy fishing village until U.S. involvement in southeast Asia during the Vietnamese war led to the development of Pattaya as an R & R (rest & recreation) site for American G.Is. Now, Pattaya is a somewhat seedy coastal resort town, with many European, Australian, and American expats and tourists. On our first day there, I was Duty Dean, so we didn’t get away from the ship until about 3 PM. we hired a taxi (car and driver) for about 6 hours for 1800 Bhat (about $51 US) and met up with Steve Keith, Randy’s old roommate from Taiwan days. I had met Steve (aka “Goatlips”) at Randy & Tessie’s wedding in the Philippines ten years ago.

He took us on a stroll along the beachfront and then we had dinner at a fine restaurant outdoors overlooking the beach. After dinner, we called the taxi driver and he came and carried us back to the ship.

The next day (Monday, March 16), we did a Semester At Sea-sponsored snorkeling trip with about 50 students out to Koh Lan, an islet a short boat ride out in the Gulf of Thailand from the Pattaya pier. These SAS-sponsored trips in Asia are done through a travel agency called Destination Asia. Koh Lan is tiny, but it has a small sheltered beach and some fringing reef with some very healthy corals, just off some rock promontories . I saw the venomous blue-spotted sting ray, a rather small ray, swimming along over a reef top and a cushion star (Culcita) that feeds on corals; it looked like a pale purple pentagonal pillow about 10 inches across. The water also has quite few Mnemiopsis-like ctenophores floating about.

The next day (Tuesday, March 17 –St. Patrick’s Day), we took another SAS-sponsored field trip, this time to the island of Ko Samet. To get there, we went by motor coach to Rayong, a coastal town about 1 hour south of Pattaya, where we boarded speed boats for the 30-minute ride out to Ko Samet. This island is a laid-back, family-type resort island popular with the Thais. The speedboat dropped us off in the surf and we waded ashore to a very nice resort hotel, where we were assigned to a bungalow-type room with having our private shower in an outdoor enclosure just outside the bathroom door. The rooms were all located in a garden setting. Georgia and I did a little bird watching and saw a black-naped oriole, a bright yellow bird about the size of a blue jay. We had a relaxing day, swimming and strolling on the beach. The weather was warm and sunny, the sea was warm and gentle, the sand was soft and white, and the vendors strolling the beach selling barbequed chicken, coconut milk, and other items were not particularly pushy. After dark, we strolled down the beach along a row of restaurants featuring seafood. Many had various lights and luminaries set out close to the sea, and low (coffee table height) tables on woven bamboo rugs were arranged, each having a number of large pillows for patrons to sit on the sand and enjoy their meal, which we did. I had grilled fish, Thai style –scrumptious! A restaurant just down the beach had a group of ‘fire men’ as entertainers. They were actually thin, athletic 14-18 year old boys who juggled flaming batons (bamboo batons dipped in kerosene which was drawn into the pith of the bamboo and slowly ran out to burn off in big flames). They were very acrobatic and skilled, though their youth brought to mind concerns about child labor laws, which exist here, but are not much enforced.

We only spent one night in Ko Samet, but we were treated to a monsoon-like rain late in the morning – a real downpour. After lunch, we were off, wading out and climbing back aboard the speedboats for a rapid ride to Rayong and the bus back to Laem Chabang and the ship.

Thursday, March 19 was our last day in Thailand, and we took another SAS-sponsored trip; this one, called the Treasures of Bangkok, was to visit the temples of Bangkok. We were up early and took a 100 km (2 hour) bus ride to Bangkok, where we visited a series of Buddhist temples and the Vimanmek mansion at Dusit Palace, one of the king’s palaces. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, but the king, Rama IX, is very popular. He has been king for 62 years, longer than Elizabeth II has been queen of England. The Buddhist temples, or “wats” as they are called in Thai, are an extraordinary sight, and Buddhist monks in their trademark saffron robes are found all around them. One temple, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, has a statue of a reclining Buddha that is some tens of meters long.

For lunch, we went aboard a rice barge on the Chao Praya River and we cruised up and down the river while eating exceptionally tasty Thai food and drinking Singha beer.

We departed Bangkok at 2000 hours on March 19 and traveled down the Gulf of Thailand at about 10 knots (slow, so that it would take 2 days) to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. After the Americans left Vietnam, Saigon was renamed to honor the legendary leader of the Vietnam Communist party. Saigon is about 4 hours up the Saigon River from the South China Sea region of the Pacific. The pilot boarded the ship around 0400 on Sunday, March 22, and we got to our dock right in downtown HCMC at 0800. Around midmorning, we took the Destination Asia shuttle bus to the Rex Hotel, a luxurious hotel in the heart of HCMC where the VPIs (diplomats and American senior officials and generals) resided during the war. A block away is the Continental Hotel where all the foreign correspondents stayed. HCMC is amazing! It is very modern, with all the upscale boutiques (e.g. Versace, Prada), small businesses, shops, street merchants, and vendors one can imagine – international brands, genuine and counterfeit, everywhere.

This is our approach to HCMC on the Saigon River. The City is in the distance.


By far the most numerous mode of vehicular transport is the motorbike. It seems as if all the motorbikes in the world have come to HCMC for a grand motocross, with pedestrian ‘kills’ the primary objective. Traffic lights or lanes mean nothing. Motorbikes (and even buses) may decide that it is more expedient to use the opposing traffic lane despite the flow of vehicles bearing down on them. The only way to cross the street is to stand on the lee side of a seasoned HCMC pedestrian (preferably, an old lady, or better yet, a brace of old ladies) who readily step into the stream of oncoming motorbikes. Somehow the motorbikes flow around them, like river water around a rock, and if you are indeed fortunate, in their shelter you can gain the other side of the street physically unscathed but emotionally wrecked. The trick is to maintain course and speed; if you stop or slow down or speed up, the motorbike jockeys get confused and you get nailed. Now, about these motorbikes: Like elsewhere in Asia, you will see almost anything remotely portable being held by a motorbike passenger seated behind the driver. I saw one pair of driver and porter where the porter was holding a 15-inch wide, 6-foot long pane of glass as the driver blithely sped down the crowded street. I didn’t actually see it, but I would bet a bit of money that it is possible to call up an appliance store and have a refrigerator delivered via motorbike.

Motorbikes at rest

So, we did a little shopping. We went into Lucky Plaza on Duong Khoi Street where we found the Linh Silk shop. I got fitted for a new suit and a Ho Chi Minh-style shirt tailor-made for $150; Georgia had a beautiful blue silk ao-dai (traditional Vietnamese dress) made, and Jackson was outfitted with a black linen shirt and a white silk tie. We aim to be sartorially resplendent at the Ambassadors Ball on board the ship en route to the Panama canal. After Linh Silk, we took a taxi to the War Remnants Museum, the curious name for a museum dedicated to the American War, the same war we back in the U.S. call the Vietnamese War. They were happy about the outcome, since they liberated their country from foreign occupation, and the museum celebrates their victory. Vietnam lost 3 million of 80 million people in the war; we lost 50,000. It is remarkable how they have gotten over it. They accept that it is in the past and over, something we have yet to fully acknowledge. Maybe that’s the reward of victory.

On Monday, March 23, we were part of an SAS-sponsored trip (with Georgia as our trip leader) of 42 people traveling to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The trip was called the Temples of Angkor. We took a bus to Tan Son Nhat airport (the same airport of Vietnamese war fame) for a one-hour flight with Vietnamese Airlines to Siem Reap, Cambodia, the city nearest Angkor Wat.

Siem Reap is Khmer for “Siam defeat”; it marks the location of a major victory by the Khmer over the Thais in the 16th century. Angkor means city, so Angkor Wat means “city of temples”. The Khmer are the people of Cambodia. Tour buses picked us up at the airport and whisked us away to a restaurant where we had a Cambodian lunch; the food was very much like Thai food. We then departed for a tour of the largest temple of the huge complex, this one appropriately named Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is a Hindu temple built in the late 12th century to the god Vishnu; it is surrounded on all four sides by a broad moat. These temples are made of sandstone and laterite, neither of which age well, but the sheer size and scope of these structures gives them grandeur and earns them their World Heritage designation.

As we crossed the causeway over the moat and left the temple complex, we were swarmed by young kids hawking postcards, counterfeit CDs and books, hats, bracelets, and trinkets. They can say all the right English phrases with impeccable pronunciation, such as “Where are you from?” or “Please buy this, mister. I am starting my own business.” These children break your heart until you look up and see the adults in their shelters orchestrating the entire scene. Our buses took us to our hotel, the Borei Angkor Resort & Spa, a fabulous hotel with teak woodwork everywhere. After a brief rest, we were back on the buses and off to a dinner & show. The dinner was a buffet with all sorts of Asian food; the show was traditional Cambodian dance, with brightly clad, barefoot dancers doing lots of hand gestures and foot curling as they acted out dramas, such as the young girl shunning the tempting demon or the fishing boy wooing the fishing girl. They danced to live music – lots of drums, nasally sounding stringed instruments, and cymbals.

The next day, we went to see other temples, beginning with Angkor Thom, a Buddhist temple built in the late 12th, early 13th century.

For $15 each, Jackson and I rode an elephant around its perimeter, seated in a box-like ‘saddle’ like a couple of sahibs out on a tiger hunt. The rhythm of an elephant ride is somewhat rocky. The elephant stopped along the way to eat a coconut it found lying by the road. We bought our elephant a bunch of bananas and fed her when we were done.

Appropriately, our next temple tour was a stroll along the Elephant Terrace. Back on the buses and on to the Shadows of Angkor restaurant for lunch – delicious Thai-style food; expresso coffee. The temples scheduled on our tour for the afternoon are 0 or 1 star, not 3 star like the ones this morning, so Georgia, Jackson, and I opt for swimming in the hotel pool, and, for the adults, pina coladas. Dinner in the evening is at a restaurant run by a Frenchman, but the food is just exactly like the lunch!

Thursday, March 26: Our final day in Cambodia. After breakfast, we boarded the buses again, this time bound for Tonle Sap Lake, the largest lake in southeast Asia. It connects with the Mekong River. It is possible to travel to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, or even the sea, by boat along the Mekong, but only during the rainy season. The lake is rich in fish, and a community of fishermen lives in a village of floating houses out on the lake, tending their fish traps and fish farms. The floating village was our destination, and we took a boat from a small tributary out onto the lake. The boat was a typical wooden (teak) boat, maybe 50 feet long, with a diesel truck engine and a steering wheel from a Toyota, complete with cruise control and turn signals (neither of which worked). The driveshaft extends maybe ten feet behind the boat and it can be raised or lowered by a winch when traversing shallow areas, of which there are many. So, we roared away out onto the lake and docked at the floating village’s emporium, with its live crocodile tourist amusement and its snakehead fish in aquaria. I bought an Adidas shirt (knock-off?) for Jackson for about $13 and an antique jar for the kitchen for $8. Many of these fishermen are Vietnamese who have traveled the Mekong up into Cambodia after the fish. They are viewed as illegal, but tolerated, aliens by the Cambodians.

The floating village...notice the pigs in the floating barnyard

We returned to our bus and headed back to Siem Reap, stopping on the way to photograph the large paddies of blooming water lilies, a key flower in southeast Asia. Buddha is often depicted sitting in a lotus blossom. We also saw people harvesting the rice crop using hand sickles. Water buffalo were a very common sight in the fields.

After a scrumptious lunch at the Borei Angkor Resort, we checked out and boarded the buses for one final temple, the temple overgrown with jungle that served as the backdrop in the movie “Tomb Raiders”, with Angelina Jolie and Jon Voigt. It was very cool, with its 250-year old strangler fig trees sending snake-like roots over stone buttresses and down the temple sides. After that, it was back to the Siem Reap airport and the flight home to our ship docked in Ho Chi Minh City.

Friday, March 27 was our last day in Vietnam and Jackson and I were up early for an SAS-sponsored bus trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, the elaborate tunnel system constructed by the Viet Cong. Construction was begun in 1948 when the French were still in control and the Communist revolution was in its infancy. (“Cong” means communist.) Later, when the Americans were here, the 25th Infantry Division built their base right on top of the tunnels and never discovered the extensive rabbit warren of tunnels branching all around them under the ground. Jackson entered one of them and crawled through it; I passed up on the opportunity. Jackson also got to fire a 10-round clip from the weapon of his choice: M16, AK-47, or M-30 machine gun. Being a fan of the American G.I., Jackson chose the M16 and fired off his ten rounds at some targets.

We returned by bus and dropped off some souvenirs we had purchased, and then we went out to pick up my tailor-made suit which was scheduled to be ready today and for a walk around HCMC. Since Jackson’s digital camera had died somewhere the other side of India, and the ‘menu’ option on mine refused to respond to my repeated summons to appear, we were in the market for new cameras. So we sauntered into the department store across the corner from the Rex Hotel and looked over the available merchandise. Half an hour later, we walked out with two digital cameras – a 7 megapixel waterproof one for me and a 12 megapixel marvel for Jackson – for about $325. Then, it was over to Linh Silk to pick up my suit and then dodge the motorbikes back to the Rex Hotel to meet the shuttle bus.