Thailand

Thailand

Sunday March 15 to Thursday March 19

 

Day 1

We docked in the port city of Laem Chabang, Thailand early on the morning of Sunday, March 15.  Unfortunately, the passport stamping and ship clearing process went very slowly and we weren’t able to get off the ship until noon.  After getting off, we immediately took the ship’s “shuttles” to Bangkok, which is about 2 hours from Laem Chabang.  I spent my time in Thailand with anywhere between 6 to 8 people, depending on the day.  Our group consisted primarily of our group of friends from around Chicago and Wisconsin.  Once we got to Bangkok, we checked into our hotel (The Vienthai), which turned out to be incredibly nice and relatively inexpensive (especially when you put 8 people in only 2 rooms).  Our hotel was located in the heart of Bangkok’s young, touristy, and backpacker’s district, one block away from the famous Khao San Road.  After getting situated, we ate our first Thai meal.  I had a delicious chicken satay, which was very reminiscent of the version of the dish we order at home, and an order of Panang curry with chicken, me and Alex’s favorite Thai dish that we order everywhere we go at home.  We learned that when it comes to Thai cooking, and more specifically Thai curries, besides the basic ingredients, there is no set or understood “recipe”; and every chef/cook will make his own version of the dish.  So, with that said, the Panang curry, and all the Thai food we ate, was very good, but it is difficult to compare it to what we eat at home every week.  However, while I definitely prefer the Thai food I ate in Bangkok, I think everything we eat at home would fit in very well if it was served in Thailand.  After lunch, we spent several hours walking around Khao San Road, a three or four block stretch of hundreds of small shops/stands, dozens of food carts, and lots of restaurants and bars.  We walked up and down the street, checking out the shops selling everything from tshirts, art, crafts, dvds, and every kind of knock-off item imaginable. 

Once we were done getting our first impression of the street, me and three of the guys we were with arranged to go to a Muay Thai fight.  Muay Thai is Thailand’s national sport and is a very intense version of boxing in which pretty much anything goes.  Fortunately, Sunday night turned out to have the biggest fights of the week, so the stadium was relatively crowded.  We spent the extra couple hundred Baht ($6-7) to be able to sit ringside, which was very, very cool.  We watched 7 fights (5 three minute rounds each), of which 2 of them ended in the first 30 seconds, with one of the guys having to be helped out of the ring.  The fighters were extremely strong and agile young Thai men, all weighing UNDER 110 pounds.  In one of the fights, a young American guy from San Francisco, who we learned had been training in Thailand for the past year, fought a Thai guy and ended up winning.  In the stadium, many of the local Thais were betting on the fights, like you’d see in a movie, with their hands and stacks of money waving in the air, yelling and shouting things arbitrarily.  We started out jokingly betting small amounts of baht amongst ourselves, just picking a fighter merely on the color of his shorts, red or blue.  Soon, two of the locals sitting next to us and watching us having fun betting small amounts, asked one of my friends who he wanted in the next fight.  After making sure he wasn’t getting into anything stupid and confirming several times they were only betting 200 baht (about $5), they bet on the next three rounds, again with my friend picking his fighters merely on the color of their shorts.  My friend, Tucker, ended up winning all three rounds that he bet on with the local and after each one they joked about it.  After the fight, we went back to meet the rest of our group on Khao San Road.  We hung out there for a while and then before heading back, we stopped at several of the street food stands/carts.  I had a few grilled skewers of chicken and beef, costing a total of 20 baht (less than 60 cents) and my friend Josh had pad thai, except after talking and joking with the “cook” behind the stand, he cooked the pad thai himself, mixing the noodles, egg, vegetables and seasonings in the hot wok by himself. 

 

Day 2

On our second day in Thailand, we spent the day doing a lot of Bangkok’s sight-seeing stuff.  We started by going to the Grand Palace, the incredibly enormous pavilion that served as the residential palace for the previous royal family.  The palace has dozens of buildings, some being very colorful and filled with intricate designs, while others were simply covered in gold.  Gold is one thing that you see everywhere in Bangkok.  The Grand Palace is also home to one of the three famous Buddhas in Bangkok.  In the center of the pavilion is the building housing the Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the most sacred Buddhist temple in Thailand.  Here, a large jade/emerald Buddha sculpture sits atop a golden pyramid-kind-of-thing.  It was very cool to see and it was the one part of the pavilion where we couldn’t take pictures.  After spending several hours at the Grand Palace, we had lunch at a small restaurant next to our hotel, where I had a great cashew chicken/stir-fry thing. 

For the rest of the day, we hired two took-tooks (very similar to the rickshaws in India) to take us to three of the other big spots in Bangkok.  We went to Wat Intharawihan, another of the three famous Buddha’s in Bangkok.  This one is an enormous, 32 meter tall and 10 meter wide, GOLD, standing Buddha.  Next, we went to a Buddhist temple on the top of a mountain, which required us to climb 300 steps.  It was a very small and relatively simple temple that was filled with monks, and overlooked a lot of Bangkok.  Afterwards, we went to a large outdoor pavilion with lots of Buddha statues and sculptures, as well as many shrines.

When we got back to the hotel, the six of us got Thai massages.  All of us laid down in beds alongside each other as small Thai women spent an hour bending, pulling, and twisting us in ways that bodies are not supposed to go, at times causing more pain than relaxation.  Afterwards, after paying our only $8 each, we went back to the hotel to get ready for our dinner at Sirocco, one of Bangkok’s nicest restaurants on the 64^th floor of a building.  We made a reservation the day before, immediately after checking into the hotel and still the earliest time was 9:45pm.  The restaurant had its own private elevators and once stepping out of them, we saw the restaurant, an incredibly modern setup, outside on the top floor of the skyscraper, overlooking all of downtown Bangkok.  It was incredibly unique and definitely the coolest restaurant I’ve ever been to.  We started with a drink at their color-changing bar at the edge of the building on an extended area overlooking the city.  For dinner, the eight of us sat at a candle and torch lit table in a raised part of the restaurant with, again with incredible views.  The other part of the dinner experience, the food, was awesome.  They served us basket after basket of a variety of breads, crackers, and breadstick-things with a terrific chive butter/spread.  I also had a terrific French onion soup.  Before bringing out our entrees, they brought us small sorbets to cleanse our palates and surprised us with a complimentary bottle of champagne.  For my entrée, I had the Australian beef tenderloin with a polenta thing and a bleu cheese potato gratin.  It was delicious.  We unfortunately didn’t make it to dessert, but I’m sure it would have been great.  Our remarkable and unique dinner was expectedly expensive (thanks Mom and Dad), but given that all my other meals in Thailand cost under $3, I think its okay.  We finished dinner after midnight and I went to bed, fully satisfied with after such a wonderful meal.

 

Day 3

On the third day, six of us did a day trip out of Bangkok we planned the day before at a tourism office in our hotel.  After waking up at 6:45, having breakfast at the hotel’s complimentary buffet (which had both American and Thai breakfast items), we began the 1.5 hour drive to the floating markets in the Taling Chan District of Thailand.  We then took a long, skinny motor boat to the actual floating market, a 1km long stretch of essentially small canals filled with tiny boats with guys rowing/paddling (very reminiscent of Venice).  In the canal, there were dozens of boats with people selling everything from all of the touristy stuff to food that they actually cook/grill/fry in the boat.  When you see something you like you just tell the “driver,” he’ll row over to the boat, grabbing on to it so you can see everything and talk to the merchant.  While on the boat, I got an order of spring rolls (the food item that I had the most of in Thailand), that ended up being the best I’d eat in Bangkok.  After the floating markets we went to an elephant village where me and my friend Jamie got to ride an elephant around, through a jungle kind of thing, and in and out of several feet deep streams.  At one point my water bottle fell out of my bag and the elephant picked it up with his trunk and handed it to our “driver.”  After the elephant village we went to a craft market and a gem factory, both of which unfortunately turned out to be nothing that cool.  We ended up getting back to the hotel at 5pm-ish, and all took naps until around 8pm.  After we had dinner at a small restaurant on Khao San road.  I had the Tom Ka Gai soup (spicy coconut broth with chicken) that I can definitely say was better than any other version of the soup that I’ve ever had.  We spent the rest of the night hanging out on and walking around Khao San.  We eventually found a very cool bar/club with a terrific Thai band that played lots of American covers, which was a lot of fun.

 

Day 4

We took our fourth day in Bangkok pretty easy.  We woke up around 11am, I called home and was able to talk to Alex for a while, and then had lunch at another small restaurant around our hotel.  I had a plate of fried noodles (the long and flat ones) with chicken.  Afterwards, we went to the third and final famous Buddha that we had yet to see, Wat Pho, or The Reclining Buddha.  We spent several hours at this large pavilion, whose focal item is a gigantic gold plated reclining Buddha that is 46 meters long and 15 meters high, inlaid with mother of pearl.  Afterwards, we all got massages again, however this time, instead of having to be pushed and pulled, I got a 30min foot massage and 30min back massage, again for only $8.  After our massages we did some shopping on Khao San for a while.  When we got back to the hotel, about ten of our friends that had gone to Phuket were there checking in for our last night in Thailand.  Soon after, we all went to dinner at another small restaurant around our hotel.  (All these “small restaurants” are little Thai restaurants holding maybe 20-30 people that line the streets, all with pretty similar menus, and prices of “entrees” at around 70-90 Baht (under $3)).  I had a terrific red curry with chicken and we shared several orders of chicken satay.  After dinner, we broke off into several groups and again hung out on and around Khao San, where lots and lots of SAS students ended up for their last night in Thailand. 

 

Day 5

On our last day in Thailand, I woke up at 9:30ish, called a few more people from the cheap overseas phone at the internet café, packed everything up, and then stopped in to say hello at the Chabad of Bangkok, which just happened to be literally right across the street from our hotel.  No wonder we kept running into Israelis on Khao San and why people tried to ask me to buy suits from them in Hebrew.  The Israeli rabbi/head of the Chabad was very interested in hearing about Semester at Sea and was kind enough to let me keep a couple “Chabad of Thailand” kippahs.  Afterwards, we had a quick lunch next to the hotel before having to take a cab back to downtown Bangkok to get on the SAS shuttle back to the ship in Laem Chabang which was leaving at 1pm.  Due to Bangkok’s such terrible traffic, at any time of the day, it took us almost 40 minutes to get there and barely made the last of 8 busses leaving for Laem Chabang.  We ended up getting back to the ship at around 3:30, where we had to wait in the longest line yet to get screened to get onto the ship since several hundred people arrived pretty much at once.  After about an hour we were on the ship and at around 8pm we were leaving Thailand, en-route to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

 

Overall, Thailand was absolutely amazing and definitely one of my favorite countries that we have visited so far (probably because of the food). 

 

 

We had two days at sea between Thailand and Vietnam, both filled with classes.  One of the nights was the Crew Talent Show, in which dozens of members of the ship’s crew performed many acts ranging from singing songs to flair bartending/juggling.  It was very cool seeing a lot of familiar crew members performing and doing funny things. The talent show served as a fundraiser for the ships’s Crew Welfare Fund, which provides money for various aspects of crew life, including recreation equipment, in-port activities, and better accommodations.

We are now done with Vietnam, on the ship, on the way to Hong Kong.  Vietnam was terrific and it was great being able to talk to everyone I did on the phone.  I hope to have the blog post up soon and hope everything is great at home!!!

India: Part 2

So, we are back on the ship now, having just left Thailand and on the way to Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam.  We will have two days at sea before arriving in Vietnam. Thailand was absolutely incredible, however, before talking about what we did, I need to finish my post for India, so here goes…

India: Part Two

Saturday

On our third day in India, Saturday, we were off the ship at 11:30ish and took rickshaws to Spencer’s Mall in Chennai.  Spencer’s (the name of the mall) is the largest shopping mall in all of India and the most unique mall that I have ever been to.  In addition to being humungous with many identical looking sections/wings or “phases”, I was most intrigued by the vast variety of types of stores.  There were all the department, clothing, and electronic-type stores that you’d see in any mall at home, all with fancy signs, security guards, and credit card machines and fixed prices (not too much to ask for, you’d think), as well as countless small personally owned little shops selling the craft and souvenir-type things.  Yet these small shops look and function like the stands on the streets, without any fancy signs, lots of bargaining, very funky smells, and only accepting cash.  We spent several hours in the mall, mostly just walking around, running into other SAS students, and getting looked at by all the Indians.  We stopped in one of the chain/very commercial music stores and got some CD’s of popular Indian music.  Unlike in the US where CDs cost $10+, these CDs cost between $2 and $3 each.  Lots of stores had entire walls of Slumdog Millionaire stuff, especially the soundtrack since the Grammy winning song artist A.R. Rahman is from Chennai.  After the mall, we took rickshaws back to the ship and were fortunate enough to be driven by an Indian man named Jaffar.  It turns out that Jaffar has driven SAS students around for many years (Chennai is one of the most visited ports of Semester at Sea).  In fact, he showed us well over a dozen postcards and letters from previous SAS students, a couple going back to a 1999 voyage. 

After getting back to the ship and changing out of our incredibly sweaty and disgusting clothes, me Jonathan, Isaiah and a few girls went to a movie with three of the Indian students we had met several nights before at the Welcome Reception.  The movie theater experience is very different in India than at home.  There are only about 7 or 8 movies at each theater, a couple from the US, the rest Indian.  People buy tickets for movies up to several days in advance.  The theater, however, was hands-down the nicest movie theater I have ever been to.  Everything seemed brand new and very western and modern, you had to go through security to get in, and the bathrooms were incredibly nice, especially for India. Another cool thing is that our tickets only cost 120 rupees each (less than $3) and the JUMBO popcorn and drink combo, which would be over $10 at home was only 100 rupees (less than $2).  However, even though they seem incredibly cheap for us, our friends told us that the prices were considered very expensive. When we got to the theater before the Indian students, they told us to just get tickets to whatever, as they didn’t really care what to see, just that we’d get to see and experience an Indian movie. The one Baliwood movie that we were recommended to see was sold-out, so we got tickets to some other random Indian movie that we of course had no idea about.  It turned out that we got tickets to a three hour, P.O.S., movie in Tamil (language of South India) that the guys compared to Scary Movie or one of the many stupid “spoof” movies.  Throughout the movie, they kept looking at us saying the movie was BS and that we should go.  So we left half way through, at the intermission (yes, they have intermissions in Indian movies).  The guys then took us to a close-by small, authentic, and local vegetarian South Indian restaurant.  We were the only non-Indians there and at one point we even saw the chefs peering out of the kitchen to see the Americans they were cooking for (no joke).  The guys ordered well over a dozen dishes for us to share and pass around.  Most of the SAS people with us didn’t want anything spicy, so I had them order a spicy potato curry kind of thing for me to try.  It ended up being probably the spiciest (but still delicious) thing I’ve ever had served to me.  All of the food was great, despite us not knowing what most of it was, and by the end of the meal we were all stuffed.  During dinner we exchanged stories with our new friends, talked about college, and taught them how to play football after they taught us the basics of cricket.  All three of them were incredibly friendly and interested in everything we said.  At the end of the meal, we were amazed to see the bill at only 170 rupees per person (less than $4).  After dinner, we went back to the ship and made plans to hang out with the guys again the next night.

Sunday

On Sunday, I woke up at 6am again for the 7am SAS trip entitled RURAL INDIA & DAKSHINACHITRA HERITAGE VILLAGE.  Again with Jonathan and Isaiah, after an hour bus ride, we started the day at a local village in which we got to watch a large Indian wedding procession.  Next, we went to a rice paddy and watched several women show us the pain-staking process of harvesting single grains of rice.  After, we went to a very rural village where we walked around, took a tour of a very nice family’s home, drank out of fresh coconuts after watching a man climb a 30+ foot tree with his bare hands to throw them down to us, and played with lots of Indian kids.  Following the village, we went to the DAKSHINACHITRA HERITAGE VILLAGE, where, according to the description, Traditional craftsmen and folk artists work and perform in the reconstructed period settings of 19th –century streets, homes and workshop spaces.  There, we had a great South Indian lunch, again eating lots of things I had no idea what they were.  We also toured 4 replica houses representing the four major regions of southern India, watched craftsmen make pottery, various art, henna, weaving, and other things. 

We got back to the ship at around 5:30 and soon after we (me, Jonathan, Isaiah, and the three girls) went to meet the Indian students at the beach.  Being the 2^nd longest beach in the world, it took us a while to find them, despite several phone calls of us and them knowing exactly where the others were.  Also, even at 6:30pm, as the sun was going down, it was still incredibly hot out.  We stopped at an Indian food court-type-thing on the beach and I picked up some kind of chicken sandwich (which ended up being surprisingly good) and we all ate together on the beach.  Having been a Sunday night, the beach was incredibly crowded. It seemed like every person in Chennai was there relaxing, eating, talking, and there were many kids playing pick-up cricket games.  We sat, talked, and walked around for several hours and when we finally said goodbye, after exchanging emails and everything; the guys presented us with gifts and personalized cards. 

Monday

Monday was our last day in India.  Having done and seen pretty much everything there was in Chennai, I slept until about 11 and at around noon, me and a few other people went back to Spencer’s Mall, where probably half of the ship was since it was our last day in India and our on-ship time was 6pm.  I got a very cool Indian cricket jersey and some other small things that I enjoyed bargaining for.  We finally got back to the ship at around 4pm, upon which I soon after took a very necessary nap after having had to wake up at 6am two of the last four mornings.  We left Chennai at around 8pm for the port city of Laem Chabang, Thailand.

 

After leaving India, we had five days at sea.  The first day we did not have any classes and was used as a day for us to reflect on our time in India (or as many people think, allow everyone’s stomachs to get back to normal).  The next four days of class were very busy for me.  I had a big paper to write on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and my second speech to give in Public Speaking.  Both ended up going very well.  Like my first paper in Asian-American Fiction, I did surprisingly well on the second one. Also, my professor really liked my speech, who is apparently pretty tough when it comes to grading and critiquing peoples’ speeches.  Also in between India and Thailand, we had a Halloween themed “Pub Night” in which a lot of people dressed up in whatever make-shift costumes they could create.  It was a lot of fun and cool to see how into it people got using various things they had bought in countries.

 

India!!! (Part One of Two)

India…Where to begin??? Let me start by saying that India has been the most different and most unique of the countries we have visited so far.  Every single aspect of everything is different in India.  From the ever-present “smell” that can change from disgustingly bad to worse in just a few steps, to the general dirtiness of the streets and the air, to the loudness and insanity of the traffic at every street corner, India is a place unlike anywhere I have ever been.  However, despite these “differences”, there are two things that make India an absolutely extraordinary place, one which I would go back to in a heartbeat.  The first is just a cool observation.  India is an incredibly colorful place.  Everywhere you look you see women wearing saris in dozens of different colors.  It’s impossible to find two women with the same color and styled sari.  The second, and more important, aspect that makes India such a wonderful place is the people.  The Indians that we met and talked to are some of the nicest and friendliest people that I have ever met.  As I’ll talk about later, they will bend over backwards to help you (not necessarily the rickshaw drivers whose sole purpose in life is to rip you off) and are generally just as curious to learn about you as you are to learn about them.  With this said, let me begin to tell about my experience in India…

 

We docked in the southern city of Chennai on Thursday March 5 and were there until Monday March 9.  Chennai is the fourth largest city in India, with an official population of 8 million, but in reality one of about 13 million.  It is the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu and is also home to the second longest beach in the world (although not one that I would ever want to swim in), stretching over 14 km.  It is unbearably hot and sunny (mid 80’s) during the day and since it rained twice while we were there was very humid at times.  Also, I think its worth mentioning that leading up to India, the ship’s medical staff sent out countless emails, notes, and gave several presentations about TD (Travelers Diarrhea) and how to avoid it.  I’ll say now that I did not have any problems at any point and I don’t think that anyone I’m friends with did either.  During my stay I spent my time primarily with two great guys that I have met on the ship, Jonathan and Isaiah, both who go to Champan University in California. 

 

Thursday

On Thursday, after docking at around 8am, we had a diplomatic briefing by three young guys from the US Consulate in Chennai.  They told us that India would be one of the relatively safer ports we’d be visiting and spent a lot of time expressing jealousy of what we’re doing and comparing it to their college experiences.  After the briefing, I spent the day doing a Dalit Work Project. This consisted of us going to an “untouchable” village and helping out.  About 20 students took about an hour bus ride from the ship to an extremely poor village.  As we got off the bus we were greeted by probably the entire community, given freshly made leis, and formed a procession (including musical instruments) and walked to their village’s school.  Once altogether and having each received a “bindi” (red dots on foreheads) several groups of kids sang and danced for us, a man sang a song, and another read a prayer.  Soon after we had the opportunity to paint the inside and outside of their school, which was more of brick building than anything else; no rooms, desks, supplies, tables, whiteboards, (a/c), or anything that would resemble a school environment.  We painted for nearly two hours and got covered in what was probably toxic blue paint, in addition to sweating more in the oven of a school than I have ever sweat before.  Afterwards we had the chance to play with the kids.  They love getting their pictures taken and being able to see the image of themselves immediately on the backs of everyone’s cameras.  Another thing I hadn’t experienced before was dozens of kids running up to us with pads of paper, unable to speak English, but able to say, “Hello, autograph…”  I signed probably 50 different pads of paper and for whatever reason it seemed like things that these kids will be treasuring and showing to all of their friends.  We also spent a while playing duck-duck-goose with the kids, which was a lot of fun.  Soon after, the Semester at Sea students had the chance to sit with the director of whatever program we were on, an American educated Indian man, and discuss life in the slums.  He (and as we’d soon see everyone in India) was very quick to bring up the movie Slumdog Millionaire and was extremely surprised and pleased to see that all of us had seen it. (The ship looped someone’s pirated copy on the TVs for a few days before we got to India). 

 

After getting back to the ship, showering, and having a quick dinner, I and about 150 other SAS students were bused to a Welcome Reception hosted at a local university by about 100 Indian college students.  This was one of the coolest experiences I have had so far.  We were essentially placed in a large courtyard with dozens of our Indian counterparts for several hours.  I had the chance to sit down and talk to a handful of Indian students (all spoke English fluently and Im pretty sure every guy there was either an engineering or computer science major).  Here was where I began to understand how nice and wonderful Indian people are.  Everyone I talked to was as interested in asking me questions about like in America as I was in them.  Some things we talked about were politics, music, and most interestingly, marriage.  Everyone I talked to would soon (in the next several years) be getting married to someone they don’t know, someone they’ll likely not know for more than a couple hours.  While all the SAS students listening to them discuss this were unable to comprehend how they could do that, all of them were absolutely okay with it and are not the slightest bit anxious or apprehensive about their parents picking out wives for them, as its part of their culture.  By the end of the night, I had exchanged probably a dozen emails, yet had learned so much more about India, Indians, and Indian culture than I could have in any other way.

 

Friday

On Friday morning, I woke up at 6am for an SAS trip to Kancheepuram and Mamallapuram, two cities a couple hours away from Chennai.  Kancheepuram, the “Golden City,” is one of the most sacred places of pilgrimage for Hindus. Mamallapuram is an ancient port city of the Pallava kings as well as a popular beach resort in Southern India.  Throughout the day, we visited five or six very different temples, saw several sites of immense and intricate stone carvings, and went to a silk factory.  There, we learned that it takes them 15 days to make a single sari by hand (probably why they are incredibly expensive).  For me, the highlight of the day was our lunch, a gigantic Indian food buffet at a very nice beach resort/hotel.  There were no less than 20 different items that we tried.  We started with a terrific mawligatawny soup (yes, like from Seinfeld) and went on to eating rice, noodles, several different curry things, calamari, a lamb stir fry, spring rolls, AMAZING garlic naan, and some awesome crunchy chip-kind-of things.  For dessert they had a huge table of different kinds of fruit, all of which were fresh, delicious, and a great change from the rotten bananas and funky peaches and plums we get on the ship.  We were all very tired and sweaty when the day trip ended and were back on the ship, ready to shower, at 7ish.

 

By 7:30, me, Jonathan, Isaiah, another guy named Spencer, and several girls were ready to go out to a nice dinner for one of the girls’ birthday.  To get around in Chennai, its easiest to take what they call auto-rickshaws, small and completely open 3 passenger taxis, that weave in and out of traffic and between cars honking constantly, in some of the scariest and most intense driving I’ve ever seen.  I finally understand what it may have been like for dad to learn to drive in Iran and why he drives so poorly now (just kidding).  The seven of crammed in two of these rickshaws for the 20 minute ride to the very nice Park Hotel.  As we were driving there, in the middle of night traffic, our driver, who we had been talking to and joking with, joking tells Spencer (who’s sharing the small bench in the front with him), “Ok, now you drive.”  WTF we all say.  Then the driver grabs his hands and places it on the handles (the cart is driven like a motorcycle with handle bars that you twist to accelerate and with brakes like on a bicycle).  “Your turn,” he keeps saying.  (THIS IS ALL ABSOLUTELY, 100% TRUE)  Soon Spencer is driving our rickshaw, in the middle of this insane traffic, getting honked at, for at least five minutes.  In his time as our driver, he changed lanes, shifted from first to third gear, and made a turn in a intersection.  And yes, the whole time, we’re sitting in the back holding on for dear life while the driver is sitting back, kind of paying attention to Spencer driving, and enjoying making our night, and possibly stay in India.  After safely getting to the hotel, which we knew was very nice by the Maserati and Aston Martin parked outside, we went in to their restaurant for a very nice dinner.  I had a delicious take on a fancy version tandoori chicken and for dessert they brought the birthday girl, Julia, an enormous and rich chocolate cake (on the house).  The seven of us couldn’t even finish it.  After dinner and hanging out at the hotel for a little, we took rickshaws back to the ship, and when we looked at our driver and asked if we could drive, he looked at us like we were absolutely crazy.

 

…..To Be Continued…

FW: Mauritius, Sea Olympics, and the Way to India

 

 

Ari Rokni

arokni@semesteratsea.net

www.ari-at-sea.blogspot.com

Semester at Sea: Spring 2009

University of Wisconsin: 2010

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From: Arya Rokni at Semester at sea
Sent: Wed 3/4/2009 3:30 PM
To: arirokni.ari-at-sea@blogger.com
Subject: Mauritius, Sea Olympics, and the Way to India

We spent the day of Friday, February 27 on the beautiful island of Mauritius.  Since many of you probably don’t know much about Mauritius (I had never heard of it prior to it being put on our itinerary), here’s a little about it.  Mauritius is an island about 900km East of Madagascar.  It is renowned for being the only home of the dodo bird.  It is a very green island known for its beaches, warm climate, and surrounding coral reefs.  We docked in the city of Port Louis at around 7:30 in the morning, had another diplomatic briefing by two members from the US Embassy, and were off the ship at around 9:15 to go on a Semester at Sea catamaran and snorkeling trip.  About a hundred SAS students got onto 4 fairly nice catamarans for the day.  On the way to our first of three snorkel areas, we say several groups of dolphins swimming alongside of us, which was very cool.  The snorkeling ended up being okay, unfortunately not as great as what we’ve seen in Hawaii.  For lunch, each catamaran’s crew grilled chicken and fish on the boat and we had a very good Mauritian lunch.  After lunch, we went snorkeling again and had a chance to just hang out on and jump off of the catamarans and swim for a while.  We ended up getting back to the ship at around 5pm (we didn’t have to be back on until 8pm this time).  So me and a bunch of people took a water taxi (we crammed 31 people into a tiny dingy of a water taxi) to go to the town center/downtown.  We walked around for a little, got some souvenirs, and then sat down for a fairly quick dinner and drinks.  We ate at an extremely multi-cultural restaurant and between the 10 or so of us, we had some terrific pizza, Chinese dishes, as well as pasta and seafood.  After we ate, we crammed into another water taxi with many other SAS students to get back to the ship on time.  After waiting in a medium-sized line, we were back on the ship by 7:40, with lots of time to spare.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it yet, but one thing that SAS is very strict about is being back on the ship on time.  If you are not on the ship at the required time (actually on the ship, not even in line to get on), you will be assigned “dock time”, meaning you’ll have to stay on the ship for a certain amount of time when we get to the next port (at least 6 hours).  I haven’t had any problems with getting on the ship on time or getting dock time and don’t anticipate ever having to.

Once everyone was on the ship Friday night, at around 9pm, we had the opening ceremonies for the Sea Olympics.  As I described in my last post, Saturday, February 28, would be the Sea Olympics, a day of very intense competitions between the many “seas” (divisions of students by living halls).   Being in the Red Sea, I had a lot of red Wisconsin clothes to wear.  At the opening ceremonies, each team had a cheer they presented, as well as a flag and a mascot.  Ours was a kid dressed up as a bull, covered in red bull cans.  The following day (Saturday) consisted of about 20 different events.  I participated in the relay, consisting of several carnival-ish events like a 3-legged race and wheel-barrow race, as well as the flip-cup competition (yes, the drinking game, except with water), in which we won the gold medal after winning 4 consecutive rounds.  Other events throughout the day were a tug-of-war, workout competitions, poker, Pictionary, limbo, hula-hoop, Sudoku, spelling bee, photo hunt, dodgeball, volleyball, and a paper boat float.  My favorite competition of the day was the mashed-potato sculpting contest, in which each sea constructed works of art from nothing but mashed-potatoes.  My team, which ended up winning this event, built a near-exact replica of the Taj Mahal.  It was really cool.  The final event of the day, the one in which the entire ship has anticipated and crowded on the 7^th deck to watch, was the Synchronized Swimming competition.  Members from each sea had spent the past few days creating very funny and creative routines consisting of much more than frolicking in the pool.  At the end of the Sea Olympics, my team, the Red Sea ended up winning the Silver Medal.  Looking back, I am amazed how competitive the day was between so many people on the ship and how involved so many people were.

 

During the past few days since the Sea Olympics, many people have had exams in their classes.  I, for whatever terrific reason, don’t have any exams in any of my classes except Global Studies, just papers, projects, and speeches.  All of my classes are going very well.  In my strategic management class my team in the shoe industry simulation is doing very well, currently the third place team in the industry.  In my public speaking class, we have been researching and will be giving our second speech after India.  In my Asian-American Fiction class, we have just finished our second book, Jumpha Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and will be writing a paper on it when we get back from India.

 

We will be docking in Chennai, India early tomorrow morning.  Currently, I have several SAS trips planned for our time in India, many of which come from Mara’s recommendation of when she was in India on Semester at Sea.  Tomorrow I will be doing volunteer work in a Dalit (untouchable) village, which should be a very interesting experience.  Tomorrow night, I will be attending a welcome reception hosted by local college students.  Also while in India, I will be visiting (as per Mara’s recommendation) KANCHEEPURAM and MAMALLAPURAM, two very sacred and ancient cities in India.  I am also planning on getting onto two other SAS day trips as well as spending time around Chennai.  We will be in India until the night of Monday, March 9.