Paradise

I’m sure my enthusiasm is getting old but Malaysia is ridiculous. I will keep this brief since I’m using a computer on a remote Malaysian island and its kind of expensive

We flew from Penang to Kuala Lumpur on the first day. The Petronas towers are amazing. We basically had 2 nights and one full day in KL. Being the big city that it is, naturally the nights got pretty ridiculous. Our hotel was beyond anything I deserve to stay in. It’s so nice to be able to stay in affordable 5 star hotels.

I’d say a personal highlight of my time in KL was going to a spa and having a fish pedicure. Ralph and I put our feet in these fish tanks and the fish swarmed our feet and ate the dead skin off them. It was such a weird concept and an even a weirder feeling, but once I got my head around the fact that fish were eating my feet it was pretty nice.

Today we took a flight to Kuala Terreganu and then hired some dude with a boat to take the nine of us on an hour ride to this Island called Redang. We are staying at this luxury beach resort called Berjaya Redang. It is something straight out of the travel channel, and I realize I watch too much TV since I keep making all these comparisons to various channels. Our rooms are on a hillside that overlooks a pristine lagoon beach. I really have no way to describe how beautiful it is, I feel like Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Beach”. This is definitely going to be my honeymoon destination someday. Tomorrow we are spending the day diving and relaxing on the beach; life is tough.

More later

I <3 India

India was amazing; I honestly don’t know where to start so I guess I will just break down my experiences in chronological order. Making this brief would not be doing India justice so this one will be long. If you read anything, make sure you read my last section (experience #6).

Experience #1 –The roads
I’m pretty sure my life was in persistent danger while anywhere near Indian roads. Lane markers, traffic lights, and street signs are seen as mere suggestions if they exist at all. Drivers navigate traffic more by ear then by sight so everyone just constantly beeps their horn as declaration of their position. Many trucks say “honk or die”on the back of them. Sidewalks clearly were just an abrupt afterthought in city planning so most people have to just walk on the streets with all the crazy traffic. The whole situation is something you would really have to see to believe

Experience #2 –the people
Most people on the ship agree that is the people that made our time in India incredible. Now my experience from traveling tells me that when a random person comes up and introduces themselves, tries to make conversation, or start asking random questions that they are probably trying to rob me, scam me, or sell me something. In India that totally was not the case. People came up with huge smiles on their face and just wanted to shake my hand and know my name. A few even insisted that I get a picture of me and them on my camera. When driving around the city in a rickshaw everyone would wave to me and yell “HI!!”. People who spoke English would make sure I am having a good time in India and recommend places for me to go and shop owners would often give me a gift just for looking around their shop. At restaurants the owners kept bringing out complimentary dishes and really wanted us to enjoy their food. I really can’t say enough about how nice and well intentioned the Indian people were

Experience #3 –The train ride
On my second day in Chennai I found a few people I knew that were taking a train to Bangalore so I decided to go with. They all already had reserved seat tickets and I had nothing. Just figuring out the chaos of Chennai train station and getting a ticket was a whole story in and of itself. I was only able to get the lowest class unreserved ticket ($1.50) but ended up bribing the train steward ($1) to let me at least stay by my friends. It was a 7 hour train ride in an unconditioned car jammed with people. People were hanging off the sides and jumping on and off. The aisle was packed with beggars and people trying to sell stuff. It was impossible to even close my eyes for a second more or less sleep at all. I got off that train feeling so dirty and drained but it was a pretty unique experience and I’m glad I did it. The return trip to Chennai was much more comfortable as Alex and I went big and spent $20 on a ticket. We got executive A/C class on a 5 hour express train and got served a meal or tea seemingly every 15 minutes.
Experience #4 –The food

My food experience after taking the train to Bangalore was perhaps one of the most glorious eating experiences of my life. We found this nice 5 star hotel, showered up and then went down to the attached restaurant. Keep in mind our train left at 1:20 and got in at 8:45 so we were starving. The restaurant was buffet style with a whole wall just lined with every type of Indian food imaginable. I had to lie down for about an hour after I ate so much. I feel like that night was a culmination of all of the Indian food training my parents forced upon me since I can remember, and man it was epic.

Experience #5 –The culture
India was by far the biggest culture shock of the trip so far. Guys walking around with their arms around each other and holding hands was one of the first differences that caught my attention. Another simple thing that really threw many of us off is that when an Indian is listening to you they do this unique head bob from side to side. It doesn’t really mean anything other than acknowledging you but it resembles a mix between a head shake and nod and was hard to get used to.

In Bangalore we got the special experience of being allowed into the inner sanctum of this huge Hindu temple called Iskcon. This guy made sure we followed all the proper procedure and rituals including eating various things, reciting a Hare Krishna verse about 200 times, and paying respects to all the appropriate objects. It’s too bad that cameras were not allowed because the shrines inside the temple were beautiful. That day we also saw the Bangalore Palace which was impressive.

I have made a hobby of searching local newspapers and saving interesting articles about America. The best one i got in India was titled "Don't Cry For Me, America", and it was about how India feels relatively insulated from the current US financial crisis.

Experience #6 –Dalit village overnight
Now I’m about to make a bold statement but I think I can say that my two day/one night experience in a Dalit village was the most amazing experience I have ever had. I know I can’t just go around making claims like that so I will do my best to convey the entire trip, although I think no amount of pictures of words can do it justice; one thing after another just blew my mind the entire time. For those who don’t know, a Dalit is another term for an “untouchable”which is a casteless person; essentially the lowest of the low in Indian society. Now I had always been told back home the caste system in India is pretty much nonexistent these days, well that couldn’t be more wrong. It was a 2.5 hour van ride to get to this poor rural village. We then drove through the village and rice fields for about half a mile to get to the small village of Dalit outcasts. As soon as we got out of the van they paraded us through the streets with the whole village out to see us and try to hold out hands. These people only see Americans, or any white people for that matter, once or twice a year when SAS sends the same trip out. As we walked down the villages main dirt path they gave us a whole series of elaborate ceremonial blessings before sitting us down for a welcoming performance. It was about an hour long festival with many acts including dances with intricate costumes, fire acts, and daring sword acts. The village singer even wrote us a Tamil song; the first verse translated is…

Welcome students of the MV Explorer
A voyage over the seas and countries you have made
To learn the art and sculpture of India
Delta centre invites you jewels of America

We also traveled to a Dalit children’s school and women’s school of nursing. They also put on an hour long performance of song and dance for us. The main goal of these women is to become a nurse in the US. We got to interact with them for a while and teach them some of our songs and dances (they loved the Macarena and hokie pokey) and in return they taught us Tamil and Tamil songs. Interacting with the kids was also really fun, they loved to climb all over me and have pictures taken (I have about a million pictures of kids). That night we headed back to the village and discovered our sleeping arrangements. We stayed in an abandoned concrete building just right on the floor with other homeless village residents, when in Rome I guess. We meditated before bed and then made our attempt at sleeping on concrete in 95 degree weather. Needless to say we woke up pretty groggy, many of us with pretty exotic bug bites and rashes.

The next day we toured through the village. Every person was very eager to show off their home, all of which were just mud huts about the size of my walk in closet at home. I felt pretty weird that I probably was carrying way more net worth on my body (camera, video camera, wallet) then any of these families had seen in years. One person who really affected me was this 60 year old widowed woman who was working hard trying to rebuild her hut which had its roof collapse several days earlier during hard rains. Our guide explained that no one in the village was willing to help her since her son had died and they view widowed women as useless, yet she had a huge smile on her face as she showed me the parts of her house that were still standing and offered me some food. That alone really put a lot into perspective for me, things like bitching to my parents about “needing”a new computer or being in a bad mood all day because I had to wake up early. Our guide said the people in this village were lucky to make 20 rupees a day which is less than 50 cents, yet they all seemed really happy. We left the village with the kids running along the side of van trying to get a last goodbye.

I had a lot of fun in all the previous ports, but India is by far the best experience and I will be surprised if any of my activities in future ports top it. India is definitely no paradise, and I would assume that no one has that impression. A different disgusting smell hits you at every street corner, im pretty sure any clothes I wore will have to be burnt, and the pollution probably took several years off my life, but the reason I loved Chennai and not Salvador was definitely the people. The smiles on everyone's faces made the whole city brighter. I think everyone, especially myself, should take to heart the following quote which was on the wall of the Dalit village community center.

Even with little
You are rich
If you are grateful

Even with plenty
You are poor
If you aren’t grateful

Sea Olympics

Yesterday was the 96th Sea Olympics and it was quite the event. I have never seen people get so much spirit and energy over something in a sober environment. We had the opening ceremonies two nights ago with everyone decked out in clothes and face paint representing their Sea’s color and screaming their Sea’s chants.

Yesterday was a long day for me as it kicked off with a captains meeting at 8am and ended with closing ceremonies at 7pm. My job was basically to go around to all the events going on around the ship and making sure we had the necessary participants and people to cheer them on. This meant I ended up competing in many more events then I had planned on since some people were no shows and I had to fill their spot to avoid disqualifications. The most notable of these was a hot dog eating contest which was sprung on me 30 minutes after I stuffed myself with tacos for lunch. John got a hilarious video of me in much discomfort shoving hotdogs down my throat with my entire Sea around me cheering in support, a must see for anyone once I get home. I had 5 hotdogs in the 5 minute time limit and the winner had 6. If I was able to prepare I think I could have easily hit 8.

Overall the Red Sea didn’t get place in the top 3, but we enjoyed ourselves regardless. Last night was a “Gods and Goddesses” themed dance outside on the top deck. All I have to say about that is that I’m not a very good dancer as it is but throw in rough seas on a ship and I’m useless.

Both core classes have a midterm either tomorrow or the day after so the ship is the most studious I’ve seen it yet. I should probably stop writing blog posts and emails and join the trend.

The Latest

It’s hard enough to concentrate in class without huge humpback whales jumping out of the water right outside the window. I talked to the oceanography teacher later and I guess we were going across the humpbacks migratory path. Definitely discovery channel cool.

As you may remember earlier in this semester John and I got owned by some girls who pulled a fast one on us. Well chalk another one for the female team as two different girls got into our room when we were gone and totally switched around everything in our room. When we got back and found our socks were in the fridge, shirts in the bathroom, towels in the closet, life jacket where my pillow should be, pillow where my laptop should be, alarm clock in the shower etc... Owned again...

Yesterday was Grants birthday so we setup a private formal dinner. It is actually a pretty sweet deal where we all pay $25 to get dressed up and have a gourmet five course meal served to us in a private dining room. We of course got him a cake and a couple of the girls also got me a belated bday cake so we went through a lot of cake. I just thought the concept of formal dining on this ship was kind of hilarious. Hopefully we can find more occasions to do it because it’s a nice change of pace.

Two nights ago pretty much everyone packed into the union to watch a recording of the first presidential debate and again last night for the VP debate. I just thought it was interesting because there is no way that everyone there was actually interested in politics. I think for a lot of people it made them feel back at home. On a similar note, today instead of our normal core lecture the ships finance professor spent an hour explaining the current financial crisis. It sounds pretty shitty for lack of a better word.

Those are just a few things I thought might be interesting. Right now we are just southeast of Madagascar with the sea Olympics coming up in 2 days

T.I.A.

South Africa is officially added to the list of places I have to come back to.
I feel like I could write a page about every little thing I did in South Africa but I will try to make it short to spare you and my grades (I actually have a paper due tomorrow).

        First I should introduce “The Big Five” since I will be talking about them a lot, and no I’m not talking about the African animals. It includes me, John, Andy, Ralph, and Grant. Andy and Ralph go to school together in Miami and are of Cuban Decent. My mom refers to them as her other two sons after meeting them in the Bahamas. Grant is a dive master in Hawaii so naturally we bonded over dive stories, and of course John is my childhood friend. We all have long range walkie-talkies so we can coordinate on the ship and in port in a world without cell phones.  Having a solid crew of funny people really makes everything more enjoyable

        Back to Africa- I’ll start with the Safari. I have two main observations from the Safari and Amazon trip; 1. It’s a pain in the ass to get to the middle of nowhere and 2. I’ve watched Planet Earth too many times. The Safari was cool but I expected to see lions pouncing on Impala and crocodiles ambushing wildebeest, but instead we “just” saw giraffes, buffalos, zebras, wildebeest, rhinos and baboons. Still I cool experience but not exactly discovery channel cool.

        The two days in Cape Town after the Safari were perhaps two of the most extreme days of my life. Grant got in contact with this guy, Gavin, who owns a company called “Extreme Scene” and he set us up with activities for Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday John, Grant and I went Scuba diving in the predator tank of the Cape Town aquarium. It was us, a guide, and about 5 huge sharks swimming around the aquarium while crowds of people waved to us from behind the glass. I’m not quite sure how we were able to do this but it was sweet.

Wednesday gets even more ridiculous. Gavin drove us two hours away to a company that does shark cage diving. It is actually the company that the discovery channel works with for its shark week so this time it was discovery channel cool. I was in the cage first and literally within 10 seconds of getting in the water a 16 foot great white shark rammed the cage basically trying to eat me. The huge waves made everything even more intense since I was getting slammed around in the cage. The whole thing was a total rush. After shark diving Gavin drove us another two hours to go bungee jumping off an 800 foot high bridge. I’m not going to try to be tough about this; standing on the edge of the bridge about to jump was terrifying, way worse than skydiving. The cord stopped me only about 30 feet from the ground...I was on adrenalin overload.

Cape Town’s nightlife consisted of classy clubs and crazy bars, the details of which I will save for emails ? and mom don’t worry, I attended a lecture on climate change at the Kingsbury botanical gardens on my last day in Cape Town so I did something educational. Also a couple people were wondering why I don’t have many deep revelations about my experiences on this blog as I guess many people do. I do notice profound things but it is not really in my style to write about them. I save it all for my journal which I write in every day and will be awesome to read when I’m 60.

Now it’s back to life on the ship for our longest stretch at sea this semester. We will follow the coast of South Africa until Mozambique where we go east of Madagascar for a bunker stop in Port Louis on Mauritius. Last night was the roughest waves we have had yet and it was pretty fun for me, not for those who get sea sick and today I had to meet with everyone in the Red Sea to allocate events for the upcoming sea Olympics. I also want to with Eileen a happy belated birthday!