Circles and Figures

Singapore was a nice quick visit, and we will be landing tomorrow afternoon in Burma for five days. It’ll be good to experience this destination, and I’ve built it up a lot in my mind: very beautiful and exotic, primitive with lots of raw undeveloped and untouristy spots, and hot–so much hotter than Virginia in February.

The waters have been surprisingly calm as we’ve circled around Singapore heading toward Burma. Yesterday, we had a touching ceremony for Wade Lancaster, the professor who died of a heart attack in Shanghai now that his widow Jeanette is back aboard with her brother. Nearly all of the shipboard community attended a brief ceremony with poetry readings, scripture, and service with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in majestic robe. Afterwards, we filed out in silence to the fourth deck and pitched roses of different colors into the ocean as the captain steered in and infinity figure-eight shape on the waters at sunset. We really did feel like a family as Archbishop Tutu summarized our togetherness, and many of us had tears of sadness, of empathy, of remembrance for family we’ve all lost along the way.

The ceremony was also touching for Ellen and her dad on the eve of Ellen’s mother’s passing 11 years ago. She received a yellow rose, and yellow was her mom’s favorite color. It took the ship about 45 minutes to complete the infinity figure while the long procession line of faculty, friends, family, and students streamed by to toss roses into the ocean.

It was wonderful to hear Desmond Tutu speak at the service, and I had the honor of hearing him on the previous day. In Vietnam, Semester at Sea organized a day trip to an orphanage which the Archbishop joined. In discussing his experience with the visitation, he laughed his sweet, giggly high-pitched laugh and spoke of the children latching onto the students, everyone smiling and laughing. It was incredibly complimentary to hear him talk of how he was inspired by the family onboard the ship and the generosity of spirit everyone shares. This talk came on the heels of the Archbishop–he goes by Arch but I haven’t yet addressed him as such–sitting for portraits in the morning. Most of you know Jasper is very camera-shy, but he sat for our photo together and was smiling for the shot. I think you can see the excitement on my face in the photo.

Plans for arrival in Burma are somewhat in flux, and we’re arriving around 2pm tomorrow, far later than we expected. There evidently is dredging going on, or perhaps it’s finished, or maybe it’s not, and the tides come and go, so maybe the tide will be high, or maybe not. We’re thinking it may be a morning we can sleep in a bit late since class isn’t in session (either of my two classes, Jasper’s homeschooling, and the students’ classes as well) and we’ll be figuring out some ways not to arrive too early to port. Today, the crew held a man-overboard drill during the kids’ homeschooling session, and we could see everything outside the classroom/lunchroom windows. The ship slowed to about half speed, turned a full circle in the water which I’m estimating covered about a half-mile diameter, and dropped a lifeboat into the water. Jasper, with his ever-sharp eyes, spotted a life ring in the water, and we saw the small lifeboat head toward the ring which marked the location of a dummy wearing a life preserver vest. It stood out clearly in the bright sunlight, and unfortunately when the boat neared the floating body, the small waves pushed the dummy away from the crews’ reaching hands. The small boat circled around, out came a gaffing pole, and the fake passenger was aboard. Success, and the MV Explorer throttled back up to speed once the life boat was hoisted back aboard.

Singapore

 

Mmmm, strawberry.

After a long visit to Vietnam, we sailed for two days then landed in Singapore for about 36 hours. A pretty short visit to this pivotal trade center that reminds me somewhat of New York City: big, urban, lots of skyscrapers, lots of taxis and public transportation. A lot of things, struck me as different, too.

Singapore is known for strict laws, and there are regulations and signs posted reminding us visitors what not to do–jaywalk, spit, chew gum–or else pay hefty fines. As part of the briefings we receive on the MV Explorer prior to docking, we also learned that there are laws against offending public and personal modesty, so you have to be careful about public displays of affection, and you sure better not litter or vandalize. There aren’t a lot of uniformed police around but there are cameras and most likely plain-clothes officers around. It’s my impression that Singapore, as a relatively new Asian city, originated from wealth and has always been clean and orderly as opposed to other places such as China and Vietnam that are dirty and still rising up to economic prosperity.

Yes, the culture has a sense of powerful authoritarianism, but there are plenty of tourist destinations including fancy hotels, casinos, bars, restaurants, and the students hit up the casinos. I was a little worried that some of the students would test their independence and get in trouble, but as far as I know, everyone made it back to the ship and avoided caning or arrest. 

Skyline of Singapore taken from the ship.

It’s a beautiful place. The streets are clean, buildings are tall, and the landscape is jungle plants, green grass, and flowers. Traffic runs on the left as in England, and the country seems to not have thrown off the anglo names, so there are lots of references to Col. Raffles and other English colonizers even after independence in 1965. What strikes me most about Singapore is the multicultural influences of India, China, Malaysia, and England. Signs are posted in multiple languages with English predominating, and there’s also a creole mixup of the languages that lots of natives speak which they refer to as Singlish. There are also thrown into the mix Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and perhaps a few other religions. So, everywhere I went, I could see the various cultural influences on the foods, buildings, and fashion.

Museum that Ellen, Jasper, and Sandy visited. I was off riding on a smaller tropical island.

With so little time, we decided to make a few concrete plans for Semester at Sea trips along with independent time to see what we could see. On day one, Ellen, Jasper, and her dad visited a couple museums and scoped out the MRT subway system. I had gotten an invite to join three students, Nate, Ethan, and Ed, for a mountain bike ride on a small island to the northeast of Singapore known as Pulau Ubin. The island was reachable by bumboat, which I guess means once there are 12 bums seated the boat travels across the half mile to the island. Once there, we found about a half dozen bike shops with a few recognizable brands (Raleigh, Wheeler, Trek) and a few new ones (Polygon? Unicorn???), and we were hoping to get some decent rides for myself and the three students who are just getting into riding. Well, most of the bikes had the same low-end componentry, and most of the frames were for 5-foot tall tourists rather than us 6-foot-plus riders, so our search for high-end bikes was not to be. My inclination was to bypass the clunky full suspension and low-end disc brake models and find something that fit us taller guys. The hardtail Wheelers were a decent enough fit, so we settled on them and even sprung for helmets, which practically no one else did. Signs pointed the way along a narrow asphalt roadway to Kerlin Mountain Bike Park, which was built under International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) guidelines, so we were stoked at the aspect of riding real trails. The trails were graveled in places, sandy in others, and muddy most everywhere even when built according to IMBA standards. With the near-daily downpours, the trails don’t really dry out, so they were spongy and slow going, so we got a decent workout in the humid, hot conditions. Trails reminded me somewhat of the urban Richmond VA trails such as Buttermilk without the fast flow you get when the ground is hard and dry. These trails weaved up and down some short hills, and there were some roots and a bit of rock thrown in for a little more technical gnar than I expected.

Hello, Stranger. Jasper. Whatever. He ponders the art.

All four of us reached the island around noon, remarking that even though we had decent breakfasts on the ship, we were getting hungry. Oh, well, it was noon, the bikes were procured, and we found the trails in the hot part of the day. We rode for about three hours and were completely soaked in sweat along with the random mud splashes on our shirts and shorts. I had brought along my Camelbak with plenty of fluids and a number of gel packets, so I doled them out whenever we were getting close to the inevitable bonk when you run out of fuel. The riding was good, we left with no injuries and only minimal damage to the clunkers (a broken flat pedal scored by Ethan and a semi-tacoed rear wheel after Ed’s power slide) as we dropped off the dirty bikes and high-tailed it to the bumboat for the return ride.

Once back, we were famished and eyed a restaurant with chilli crabs. However, looking at Nate, Ed, Ethan, and myself, we were all dirty, smelly, and soaked in sweat, so a sit-down meal might not have worked. There was a hawker centre near the ferry, and these are essentially outdoor food courts with a great variety of cuisines including Korean, Japanese, Malaysian, Chinese, and other fusions. Plus, the food is really inexpensive, about as much as a Big Mac and soda at home but far better. None of us really agreed on exactly what cuisine to get, but it worked out great that we could each grab stuff and sit at the communal tables. I got a pineapple juice (1 SND, one Singaporean dollar or about 80 cents US), a fried whole banana ($1.20 SND), and a mixed chicken and cuttlefish curry ($4.50 SND for a large). I asked for it spicy, and it delivered with a slow-build heat that left my mouth burning for an hour afterwards. Excellent.

At this point in the first day, it was nearing 1700 (5pm), and I wanted to make it back to the ship around 1700ish to get a shower and join up with my family for the planned SAS trip. Ed, Nate, Ethan, and I finally figured out how to flag down a cab after a few attempts (it doesn’t work midblock, so we found a corner where the driver stopped) and hopped in a very nice black cab. The driver agreed to take us back to the ship, and the cost was quite reasonable, about $7.50 SND each for the half-hour ride. It was a long, slow, smelly ride, and I felt sorry that the driver had to shuttle us since we were all such a mess.

I took a super-quick shower, dressed in clean clothes, then went to the gangway to meet the group for our trip. Huh, it so happened that Ellen, Jasper, and my father-in-law were there, so we were on our way to the Singapore Night Safari without my missing out after a long day of riding and traversing the island. Basically, the Night Safari is what the name says it is: a zoo that’s open beginning at dark, and you walk among nighttime exhibits and take a tram around to see animals in their nocturnal active state. It was great, but I don’t have pictures since I didn’t fiddle with the programmable settings for night shots minus flash. Sandy got a few good shots of a leopard, but most of the animals didn’t happen to pose near the low-output lighting. Even at night with minimal light, you were still able to see lots, and there were the active deer, foxes, lions, hippos, tigers, elephants, lynxes, panthers, giraffes, tapir, and furry critters. There were also bat houses that had the largest bats on earth, fruit-eating bats that are about the size of an upside-down housecat. There were also local critters who migrated into the zoo: rats, mice, and bats were scurrying around and led to high-pitched screams. Good times.

Ellen and I signed out of the Night Safari return trip and skipped the bus ride back for a few hours to ourselves. Time for the two of us is scarce, so with me having ditched everyone during the day and Ellen’s dad offering to take Jasper back and put him to bed, we wanted to see some things on our own and opted to catch a cab to the MRT subway. It was nearing midnight and many things were closed down, including about ¾ of the stalls in the hawker center closer to the Chinatown area. However, the center had a few stalls open and some crucial items: shaved ice with fruit, and beer. Ellen described a shaved-ice concoction that Jasper had earlier that day topped with strawberries, so that sounded good to me. We got one that was basically a tall scoop of ice topped with fruit cocktail and a yellow, fruity, semi-bitter sauce. Good, once we were a few bites in. I’d had my fill of fizzy pale lager in Vietnam, so it was good to see German Erdingers and a handful of other beers. I got a Guinness Foreign Extra stout–not a great beer in the over-the-top high ABV vein I had been in prior to the trip, but it was nice to have a good enough black beer.

Supertrees. 

On day two, we taxied over to the Singapore Garden by the Sea, a new botanical garden with supertrees–think of a cyborg tree with metal branches and solar panels, and that’s about right. The outdoor exhibits at the Garden were free, and we took a ride (a few $SND) to the suspended platform at about 22 meters, or the height at the top of a typical rainforest on the main island. Sandy was looking to spend some more time with Jasper, so they went to a science museum while Ellen and I got to spend some more time alone together. We went to an older botanical garden and got in some long walks among the orchids.

Self portrait after multiple attempts in the older Botanical Garden.

One more taxi ride, and then we were back onboard and now we’re off toward Burma. The seas are very calm right now in the Malacca Strait on our way northward. The air is balmy and a bit humid, with air and water temps both the same around 85 degrees. It’s a big difference than what we usually experience at home this time of year, so we’ll be acclimating to hot on the remainder of our trip.

Best to everyone,

Scott

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Vietnam

All the students, family, lifelong learners, and myself are back aboard the MV Explore after leaving Vietnam for a stay from Tuesday February 12 through 6am this morning Monday February 18. Along the way, we’ve had some crew members leave along the way at the end of their assignments, some new crew come aboard, and some new family and lifelong learners join us. It’s a fairly big shipboard community of about 1000 total, but we all seem to at least recognize each other if not know most everyone by name. It’s fun to see SAS folks out in the country miles and miles from port: I saw my cabin steward John at one of the local bars, and we ran into multiple students in the Mekong Delta about 125 miles from the ship.

Port in Vietnam has been a little different from other ports. We sailed up the river and inland toward Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), and the river got progressively smaller and shallower as we reached our dock. Beyond the dock, smaller boats are able to travel further inland, depending on the tide. Much of Vietnam is based around the water, with the Mekong Delta having lots of tributaries and access points that allow small boats that can carry a family and their belongings (crops, animals, supplies, and market goods) into very shallow waters as we saw during our homestay later in the trip.

Small boats on the way into Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, and still called Saigon by many of the locals.

Since we’ve left China about a week and a half ago, the temperatures have been rising, and it’s been a bit of a shock to go from weather similar to Virginia’s in February to Vietnam’s hot and humid climate, similar to Virginia’s oppressive heat in July. Our first day, the ship began heading upriver around daybreak and docked at 1230, with the captain timing arrival at high tide and the peak of the heat and intense sunshine. Beautiful but hot. We walked around HCMC and saw some of the sights of a large urban city that reflects some of the recent changes in modern Vietnam: growth of business in a busy commercial port area, explosion of population and ensuing chaos in traffic (more about that later), areas of new affluence side by side with older neighborhoods where the majority of the population is poor by our standards (per capita average is around $1500) but richer now in the post war decades.

The Vietnamese Lunar New Year, or Tet, was also in full swing, and many people were traveling, so on various times of the days there would be sparser or bigger crowds on the street. On that first day, we saw a flower market set up on one of the main streets, and this street was closed to traffic with displays and sculptures drawing throngs of HCMC natives, visiting family members, and tourists from US, UK, and other parts of Europe. Oh, yeah, it was also hot. The next day, the flower displays were removed and the brick flowerbeds dismantled.

Lion dance performed on the street.

Sandy in the flower garden at Vietnamese Lunar New Year, or Tet.

Semester at Sea organizes trips within countries and also allows folks to set up their own travels and adventures independently within each country we visit, so many of the students took buses and taxis to the beach or war-era tunnels or other sights. Ellen, Jasper, and I took a SAS-organized trip while Ellen’s dad took a SAS trip into Cambodia, which is the one way you can travel outside the country without going awry of the rules. I think Sandy’s trip was great but I haven’t really had much chance yet to catch up with him now that we’re back, so I’ll detail what we did on our trip.

Our SAS trip was pretty decent and it was great to turn over the planning and logistics to someone else other than tour-guide Julie (inside joke that we call Ellen because she usually gets stuck planning our trips, and it’s a reference to the character Julie from tv’s The Love Boat). Wednesday morning we boarded a bus along with a few other faculty and lifelong learners and about 35 students to visit the Mekong Delta south of HCMC for a 2-night homestay. The term “homestay” to us meant visiting one family and staying in their home and participating in the activities of the host country and family. With this large a group, it worked out slightly differently, but in my view better, since we stayed the first night in a bed & breakfast-type cottage setting run by one family; we helped them prepare our evening meal and spent some time with them but had our own time to explore and had privacy since we were spread out into perhaps 15 rooms. On the way to our first-night homestay, the bus took us about 200 kilometers into the Mekong Delta to a series of ferry rides and small boats with a few stops along the way to visit tea houses and rice-candy vendors.

Our homestay family waves goodbye to us. They were very gracious and treated us to music and song that evening.

One of the most surreal and coolest events I can recently remember is a couple hours into our boat ride on the Delta having the boat driver cut the engines and us floating along in quietude for a few minutes. Then, around the next bend in the tributary, a group of about a dozen smaller oar-powered boats sailed toward us, each driven by a straw-hatted elderly Vietnamese woman (well, a few were steered by men). Each boat held three or four passengers, so we boarded and rode the small boats for about 15 minutes just mere inches above the murky delta water. Ellen and Jasper were in one of the first boats, and I boarded the last boat with a few other students and a male driver. Either he was trying to prevent our slightly leaky boat from taking on too much water or else he had to take a whiz, but we progressively moved past all the other boats, sometimes bumping them, to reach our teahouse destination first. I’ll have to remember that gentle-nudge method of working through traffic on the first mountain bike race I’m in once I’m back.

A woman paddles through the floating market. We rode in boats exactly like this one.

 

The homestay was quite nice with the family opening their cottages to us and all us SAS folks wandering around the small canals and fruit trees of the property. Despite some advice from the ship doctor not to swim, a few of the students dove in along with a couple local boys, and I waffled on going in and took a pass. After the evening meal, a few of us hung out on the deck and viewed the brightest stars I’ve seen thus far on the trip.

Our next day, we traveled a shorter distance via boat ferry to our bus and headed to the capital city within the Mekong Delta province of Can Tho, much smaller than HCMC but full of motorbikes and vendors. Our guide steered us through a serpentine market with bracelets, lacquer ware, and all sorts of fresh seafood and poultry, most of it live and squirming. It had to be a bit difficult for the vegans on our trip to see the rows of cut meats, eyeballs, frogs, slithering eels, and squawking chickens in the market. We got back on the bus and drove a bit further to reach our next destination, the Kim Tho hotel in Can Tho, about a block from the water. The hotel was quite nice with European-style furnishings, a large bathroom, and three beds in our room, plus to Jasper’s delight there was a flat-screen tv with Cartoon Network. I have to admit I also watched a few episodes of Regular Show with J. We also had time to walk around and scope out the town on our own in the mid-day heat, and I found a few small markets and bought a sixer of sodas and some snacks for later.

We had a nice lunch in the hotel with seafood in various soups and dishes. I ate pretty much everything but picked out the organ meats (liver, tripe, and some others) from the soup, although I did take a nibble of each. I just still haven’t gotten into sweetmeats and organs and may not ever. Jasper at each meal had some nibbles of most dishes but really didn’t consume much, especially after swearing off shrimp since they’ve been served at the meals with the heads intact and he doesn’t like food that looks back at him. Oh, well, more shrimps for me.

Elephant Ear Fish, standing vertically before we ate it. The students and I took lots of shots of our food.

We did a bit more sightseeing that afternoon, including an ancient house (not quite a mansion but very ornate for a dwelling) and a stork park. We kept thinking our guide was telling us it was an historic park, but no, we departed the bus, dashed across the two-lane traffic of taxis and motos, and walked down a 2-meter-wide concrete strip about three kilometers through rice fields. Yep, this was a stork park where white storks and the occasional black stork nest in a bamboo reserve on someone’s farm. Along the way, we saw what we saw in many parts of Vietnam: trash strewn alongside the walkway, floating in the canals, and piled beside houses made of corrugated metal and scrap wood. In some ways, it reminds me of houses I’ve seen in Appalachia back home where folks tend to worry more about basic needs and sustenance rather than the raw beauty of the place where they live.

We got back to HCMC that evening a couple hours later than expected because the Tet holiday traffic was heavy and there was evidently a traffic accident that caused some of the traffic snarls. Our guide noted that Vietnam traffic is generally safe to walk through if you do it purposefully since the motos can steer around you on the city streets, but out on the open highways where the speeds are higher, motorbikes crashing leads to about 50 deaths each day, given the number of scooters and the number of riders on each scooter. Our guide had also told me that he prefers to call the city by its prewar name of Saigon, too, so I tried to remember than when asking him questions about his experiences.

 Scooter traffic. This moto carried a full-size fridge. I have a truck for this kind of errand-running.

Here's somewhat light traffic in a circle not far from the ship. Traffic gets even heavier at nightfall. Notice the scooter with four in the middle.

Friday we didn’t do much in Saigon other than find a grocery store on the second floor of a Macy’s-type store and stock up on snacks, sodas, and the prize of my trip so far: a couple bottles of Chimay and Duvel, Belgian beers I won’t see until we finish the spring voyage and stay onship another couple weeks for the enrichment voyage that ventures into Europe. Sorry for gushing, but beer is a big hobby of mine, and I’m either making it, drinking it, or hunting it down, and so far I’ve had a handful of light yellow lagers, all okay but not what I typically have at home where there’s a great selection of Virginian, American, Belgian, and international styles. Having a couple Belgian ales in my stash onboard is a comfort, and I’m saving these for a special occasion, perhaps our anniversary or Jasper’s birthday. Or a Thursday.

Saturday we spent a bit of the morning in Saigon checking out some markets that were back open after the holiday but losing interest in the heat and seeing the same type of tourist baubles. We’d been looking for a place to get a haircut, and Ellen saw a sign outside of a jewelry shop that looked like a salon. We walked in past the counters to the back where a middle-aged man was snoozing and two middle-aged women were watching tv. No common language other than our saying “xin chao” hello, but we confirmed that, yes, they were open and would cut Ellen’s hair and my hair for a quite reasonable cost of about 220,000 dong or $10. Ellen looked through a catalog of hairstyles while I motioned to the gentleman to take about a half-inch off. He gave me an excellent short haircut, similar to what I got in Mexico but with a little more skillful tapering of the sides. Ellen found a shot of a layered style that kept her curls, and she motioned for about two inches to be cut, which was countered by a suggestion of more, so she went with it. While Ellen and I had our hair cut, the ladies were fawning over Jasper’s long yellow hair, first gently stroking it then combing it. If you know J-man, you know he shies away from attention, but we asked him to chill and told him that it would be very adventurous of him to also get a cut. Plus, I offered him a bribe, which although sizeable was overdue since I haven’t kept up with his allowance. He still has long curly hair, but it’s now out of his eyes and looks nice, and we had a great time with this small cultural experience off the tourist track.

We're flashing our new haircuts in front of Pho 2000. Dingy decor and fabulous pho soup and spring rolls. There are pictures inside of President Bill Clinton's 2000 visit. All of us got haircuts, but Jasper kept the most on.

On Sunday, we needed to be back onship by 1800 (6pm), so Ellen and her dad went for a nice long lunch and then one of the two museums they wanted to visit. Jasper and I joined two other dependent children and two of the librarian assistants on a session of ice skating and bowling. The rink wasn’t actually ice, but the skates were hockey skates that glided on white plastic sheeting material about a centimeter thick and coated with a waxy film. The resistance was much higher than ice, but dang if you couldn’t skate on it, and it was enjoyable skating with the Vietnamese teens and kids with western top-40 rink music. The other SAS kids hadn’t skated before and fell a few times, ending up covered in crayon-like shavings but did a great job with their first skate session. Afterwards, we went bowling on the 5th floor of the next-door office building and then hit up the food court for a couple pizzas at Pizza Hut. Normally, you’d think bowling and PH would be not that exciting, but the bowling alley was classy with neon, a central liquor and smoothie bar, plus a KFC. Evidently, Kentucky Fried Chicken is a splurge in Saigon, and the Pizza Hut had a very nice bistro décor. The pizzas were smaller than we expected, but the presentation and quality were excellent, and the staff were very polite and the server asked if he could serve me the first slice; I was taken aback but said thank you: “cam on”. 

Backwards skating with Jasper, Keani, and Amanda. 

There was also a trampoline in the skating rink.

I could have been a contender. Or a goaltender.

We saw lots of Vietnamese flags along with several of the communist party's sickle. I think the gist of this mural is you should be a good child for the good of the country. 

We’re back on the ocean after sailing away from Saigon Monday morning February 18, headed toward Singapore in two days. Thanks for bearing with me if you made it through this long journal entry. Vietnam was a fantastic experience for me, and thanks for sharing in my thoughts.

China Pt. 2

Big lag in writing between Japan and China, and I really don't have any good excuses because the internet connectivity was a little better in China. I also traveled on the ship between our two ports of Shanghai and then Hong Kong.

We left Shanghai on Monday February 4 and, rather than traveling inland as we did in Japan, my family stayed on the ship to travel within the country to the next port of Hong Kong. The trip sent us through the East China Sea into the West China Sea, and the waters were as calm as anything we’ve encountered yet after a month at sea. Nice change.

 

Here's Hong Kong the day we arrived. You can see parts of Victoria Peak behind the clouds. I hear it's really impressive on a clear day and looms high over the city, but it was not clear enough that I got to see the peak.

  

As we traveled between ports, there were perhaps a fifth as many students, faculty, and family onboard, so there was lots of room on the ship to spread out. Solitude is a rarity normally, but on the intraport trip it was really quiet and spacious, and I think I needed that. I also think Jasper appreciated having a little more room, and he an I joined in with a group of students playing hide-and-seek Tuesday afternoon.

We said goodby to Perry, one of the great meal stewards aboard the ship. He was really fond of Jasper, and we miss him. Some of the staff departed at Hong Kong to return home to the Philippines to see their own families.

Hong Kong arrived early Wednesday morning, and I got up early to watch the harbor lights and buildings appear, and since Hong Kong is a world-leading port, there were lots of buildings, dry docks, sea docks, ships, and traffic in the harbor. As we docked, more and more people arrived on the upper deck to see the city greet us, and I saw more skyscrapers in any one place than I ever have before; I think it’s been argued that Hong Kong has more skyscrapers than other major cities, or a greater percentage of ultra-tall skyscrapers than other cities. One thing is for sure: the population density is huge, so it was crowded and affluent with a big-city feel on steroids (or perhaps a more descriptive metaphor for my cycling colleagues would be EPO).

After Ellen planned out so many details for our Japan visit, we hit China with no real plans, and it worked out well for Shanghai. Same goes for Hong Kong. She had visited Hong Kong for a couple days while studying her semester overseas in college and remembered it as huge, especially for a foreigner alone. Still huge, but it was a little less intimidating according to her this time around.

Since there were so few people onboard and we had already cleared Chinese Customs and Immigration in Shanghai, we were able to disembark immediately rather than the usual several-hours wait that normally happens at each new port. Some students were awaiting the ship to get back and rest up after flights to Beijing, hiking trips on the Great Wall (which, according to our adopted student Molly got down to 17 below overnight as she camped in a remote spot on the Wall), and other exciting travels. Ellen’s dad was still on his four-day trip to the Yunnan province, so we had some nice family time just the three of us.

First up was a walk to the Kowloon Park about a mile from the dock on the mainland side. For the first day, we stayed on the mainland side of Victoria Harbor, hoping that the next day we’d be able to travel up to the top of Victoria Peak on the Hong Kong Island side of the harbor, but for now the city hung covered in clouds. The temps were warm in the 70s F with high humidity, so short sleeves were what I wore and was really surprised to find out the temps inland were so much colder. The Kowloon Park is sort of like a small version of Central Park, a patch of green within the concrete and tall buildings, containing playgrounds, exercise paths the elderly were using, and fish ponds and aviaries. It was nice to see pink flamingos, parrots, and Jasper got excited to see a small turtle near the flamingos. I thought the turtle looked exactly like the small turtles we see back home in the Rivanna, but he had a blast watching it perch at the concrete edge of a koi pond and waiting for it to dive ploop into the water.

Ellen’s dad arrived that night around Jasper’s bedtime, so the two of them found a Thai restaurant while I put Jasper to bed. Then, Ellen and I got to do something I hadn’t been able to do so far on this trip—go out late, just the two of us. I had been out late by myself for a time or two, and this time I was able to convince Ellen to join me. We found the Night Market a couple subway stops away. Some of the students were there as well, and once we got back onto the ship we saw they bought nicknacks such as silk robes, panda hats, and fluffy panda paws. We hunted for electronics and bought Jasper a set of headphones and a light-up spinning top for his birthday (don’t tip him off, please…). Our bargaining skills haven’t improved at all, but we enjoyed the market and all the sights of knock-off goods, souvenirs, and handmade crafts.

Jasper hits the tourist gong before boarding the Star Ferry.

The Star Ferry takes pedestrians between Kowloon and Hong Kong every 10 minutes or so, and the ferries are somewhat like rickety large double-decker buses on the water. I think this particular ferry line has operated since early the 1900s and has had four generations of ships, with these being built in the early 1960s. They were a bit rough on the inside but somewhat stately with the green and white wooden clapboards on the outside. These ferries were docked near the MV Explorer, so it was easy to grab a token and catch the ferry on the Kowloon side. Then the ferry traversed Victoria Harbor, dodging other boat and ferry traffic and their resulting wakes to take us to the Hong Kong side. A few minutes later, we were across.

The next day, we got up after our late night to head over across the harbor to the Hong Kong island side. So, it was an unusual event for us to stay out late, and it ended up being fairly late since we barely caught the last subway back and ended up onship about 0200. We slept in a little late but didn’t want to sleep off the entire day, so we caught the Star Ferry across to the high-rises of Hong Kong. The Kowloon side where the ship was contained lots of high-end stores and large malls, both above and below ground. The Hong Kong island side is quite similar but even maybe a bit more upper crust. The city really contrasts with the grittiness of Shanghai, and Jasper observantly pointed out that every third car was a Ferrari. We spent the mid-part of the day exploring and scoping out a restaurant called Crystal Jade that served dim sum all day; we wanted dim sum but it’s usually a morning item, and we didn’t have time for a meal before hitting the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.

We lucked into a private, pre-opening tour of the new Hong Kong Maritime Museum. One of the faculty invited Ellen, and she was mildly interested; Jasper and I were really interested. The museum was moving into a new building and is scheduled to open in late February, or perhaps March, and for now the museum is setting up in the new building, so it’s brand-spanking new. The museum director spent an hour and a half giving our small group a tour and explaining how the artwork and artifacts were acquired. Some of the items were bought at auction, and Mr. Hardy’s descriptions of finding out about when something exciting like the 18-meter linen scroll showing Hong Kong’s mid 1800s rise as a port were incredibly entertaining. Jasper enjoyed seeing the pirate exhibits (it’s not as noble as you’d think), and we got an autographed copy of the museum guidebook at the end, signed to Jasper by Mr. Hardy.

Ah, so then we went back to the Crystal Jade for dim sum. I got a noodle dish with spicy red chili and peanut sauce, and it hit about the right button on the hotness scale with a slow-building burn. We also got several varieties of dim sum and soups. After the dim sum, it was turning into night, and the lights burst out with neon everywhere. The clouds were now a general misty haze, so we opted not to go up the tram to Victoria Peak, but what we did do was take the commuter escalator from the business district up to the residential district. During the morning, the escalators run downhill and at night return commuters to their apartments. We rode uphill as far as we could and then wandered the streets back down.

Day two of Hong Kong, we joined a field lab that a professor had sold us on over dinner conversation. He’s a freshwater marine biologist from Alaska, and we were talking one evening about Virginia sports we participate in (mountain biking with the occasional foray into WV for cross-country skiing) and sports he does in Alaska (fat-tire winter mountain biking, xc-skiing, ice skating not on a rink but miles and miles in a straight path along frozen lakes and rivers). It was also nice to hand over the planning to Semester at Sea rather than plan out our day. We joined the students, hopped on a boat, and traveled among the smaller islands trailing a net to collect plastic pollution. Fortunately for the water but unfortunately for our trip, the waters were quite clean with the occasional plastic pellet left over from spilled cargo from the last typhoon; one of the spills involved a shipping container with tons and tons of pelletized plastic. The seas on the little boat were rough and the day was chilly compared to the first day. Jasper had some difficulty with the rocking, but it was fun traveling with the students, and Sandy enjoyed being on a small boat. I liked the seafood lunch we had as we docked on a small car-less island with a couple fish restaurants with tanks full of crabs, grouper, prawns, and snails. 

 

Temple on Lamma Island during the ocean junk-recovery trip.

I wish I had taken more pictures of us, but I think I really just didn’t feel like snapping pictures so much as taking in the sights and experiencing everything new firsthand. Ellen has been before and now Jasper and I got to see small parts of the country she spent an entire semester in during her senior year at W&M. I know we didn’t even scratch the surface of what we could see in this huge country, but everything to me was new and I’m really getting excited about seeing so much and experiencing things that are so different from home.

 

Hong Kong lit up at night as we left. There are laser shows and a neon symphony every evening at 2000. We unfortunately left right before Chinese New Year and missed the firework show.

Thanks for reading, and please send me comments either on this blog or by email. Next up is Vietnam, and this is one of the countries we're most looking forward to experiencing.

Ciao.

China Pt. 1

We're left Shanghai and are looping out to sea for a few days to dock in Hong Kong. Jasper, Ellen, and I had no real plans for China, and it's a markedly different experience than Japan. In Japan, Ellen planned out lots of travel by train, stays in traditional hotels, and we spent five days straight seeing lots of places. It was exciting, but we're still recovering from the go-go-go ness of it.

Early morning as we reach Shanghai, the MV Explorer flies the Chinese flag.

Ellen had last been to China in 1996, and it was the infamous last leg of the trip where she and I took a trip to Hawaii right before we found out we were moving to Charlottesville. At the end of Hawaii, she flew to Shanghai for a conference. I flew home on crutches with a foot injury from stepping on a sea urchin. That Shanghai trip consisted for Ellen of about 10 minutes on the street and the rest in meetings. At that time, much of the skyline didn't exist, and the huge financial district that now exists was mostly fields with the big Pearl Tower (seen in the pics below with the spheres and lights). Now the city has skyscrapers everywhere, to the point that the few that are under construction are pretty much the last ones to go up–every spot of land is now built up in the central city.

Jasper in front of the Pearl Tower and financial district by day...

Financial district lit up at night.

So, we were all still a bit tired when we reached China, and it was a short two-day sail from Japan that barely got back into a routine with homeschooling classes, my two classes, and Ellen's library duties, then bam into port and off to see a new hyper-metropolis. I'm learning a bit at each port, and Shanghai made me realize that I need a day to get the feel for a place and feel a bit at ease. I've typically not felt lost in a place I've never been: I have a pretty good sense of direction and figure if I've never been somewhere it's not possible to be lost. But in Shanghai there was a feeling that the city was so big and we could only see a small portion of it, so day one was spent seeing a few random places near the ship and getting a feel for trains and subways.

In Shanghai, we traveled to the People's Square which looked to be a few city blocks on our evil deceptive map. After walking an hour and not getting any closer, we opted for the subway and took a few stops to get to the park, perhaps a few miles away. The scale of Shanghai is enormous, so we realized maps without distance scales are evil. Once at the park, it took another 10-minute walk to find the entrance to the Shanghai Museum, which happened to be free on Sundays. Nice museum with traditional artifacts including jade, currency, textiles.

As we got back on the ship, we could tell something was going on because staff were on the phones and Chinese officials were aboard. One of the professors had suffered a heart attack and passed away, so we're reeling from the news. I met him a few times and Ellen is really close to his widow. Most of the students are inland, so the news hasn't reached everyone yet. The news hit us hard because the situation is similar to Ellen's mom passing away when visiting Hawaii, and Sandy doesn't know yet, so we know how tough it is to be in that situation. The shipboard community is really becoming tight-knit, so I think it's going to be hard when the student board in Hong Kong and hear the news.

I've also gotten some good news to balance out the sad. A really close friend is coming back to Charlottesville, and my family has a new addition with my nephew Richard and niece-in-law Jussy's baby boy Cooper arriving a couple weeks ago.

Day two in Shanghai was good. We rested up a bit, had a sense of the layout, and visited some new neighborhoods, found Korean food, and invested in a watch for Jasper so he'd have a sense of the time and worry less about missing the on-ship cutoff time. Bargaining is expected in China, and most vendors don't have prices posted, but we're lousy at bargaining so we overpaid for the watch and Ellen's hat, but even then we didn't blow through a huge chunk of money yet in China. Transportation is easy and very affordable, snacks are cheap, and meal options are unlimited. There's also signs of obscene wealth next to humble, gritty poverty: the vendors pedaling with loaded trikes across the street from the Ferrari dealership, for example.

While we're between ports in China, there are about 150 students and faculty onboard rather than the usual 900+, so there's lots of room and a bit of quiet. It's a good time to reflect, rest up, and regroup.

Hope everyone at home is well, and I miss you. Please feel free to jot down a comment or shoot me an email.

Scott


Older building in the Bund near the Shanghai waterfront. I swear it's leaning a degree or more to the left if you look closely.

These are not quite the vintage Flying Pigeons we've been hunting for (Gordon, we're still hoping to grab one to ship to you), but these Phoenixes are well-used. Bonus points to the elderly Chinese gentleman for photobombing/mooning our shot.

Mannequin shop a few blocks from the main tourist drag. I wasn't sure if I could get one past the ship security. 

Turning Japanese (I Really Think So)

Yokohama
Tokyo
Kyoto
Miyajima
Hiroshima
Osaka
Kobe

Whirlwind tour of Japan: 5 days, 7 cities. After plowing through the roughest ocean conditions encountered by Semester at Sea since 2005, we docked in Yokohama the morning of January 26 to the greeting of a brass band. Ellen, Jasper, and I had the afternoon to spend exploring, so we popped into Tokyo to see anything that caught our eyes. The way I like to travel is to wander around and find something interesting, and that methodology usually meshes well with Ellen's well-researched logistics (sometimes there are minor disagreements but it usually works out in the end).

As we moved through Tokyo's suburbs on the rapid-service train, we saw signs for the Ginza district and said, hey, let's give this a shot. There was a four-story toy store that Jasper found, and within this store were lots of cool toys. J rented a slot car and raced a bunch of laps  under the watch of the animated attendant who wielded a long spatula to flip over the cars that overcooked the corners. Also in the store, a Japanese Zero plane kit of Nanoblocks, and J finished building it now that we're on our way to China.

 
Ellen at the Mac Store in the Ginza district

I love the colonel.

Dawn was falling as we left the Toy Park store, and it faced onto a wide street with high-end shops: Prada, D&G, Apple Store,  Swarovski crystal, etc. I noticed there were no cars, and sure enough the avenue was blocked off so pedestrians could stroll. It was beautiful to walk a few blocks in the middle of the street, much like I would imaging doing if Wall Street were closed. Then 1700/5pm hit, and the cars reappeared. The Japanese are incredibly polite and I heard no honking, but we could tell the cars were ready to resume usage of the street. Then we ran into a protest and counter protest–I'm not sure what it was, but it was distinctly separated and well guarded by the police.

Next was a day trip on the high-speed Shinkansen to Kyoto. Japan has great public transportation infrastructure, so we traveled from the ship to a subway to a local train to the Shinkansen station, sort of a progression of slowest to fastest. Took us all awhile to figure out directions, connections, correct fares, and get everyone on the trains together. I also found that Japan is larger than I realized, so the trip took most of the day, and we had difficulty finding the traditional hotel we had booked. It was near a spectacular Buddhist shrine on a hillside, and the traditional hotel (ryokan) was associated with the temple and was the quietest, sparsest hotel I've ever stayed in. We had dinner that night at the ryokan and it was a fantastic spread of sushi, sashimi, miso soup, lobster, oysters, and course after course; it wasn't inexpensive, but it was perhaps 12 courses and was beautiful to look at, Most of the food was delectable, but with so much stuff there were a few items we didn't care so much for, so we skipped them. Then we took traditional Japanese baths–segregated, unfortunately–and made up our folding beds after putting aside the low table. The ryokan was very nice but catered toward folks who went on pilgrimages to the temple, and certainly not to western tourists.

Regardless, the stay was really nice, and we got up the next morning early for a private tour of the Buddhist temple. Ellen's dad, Ellen, and myself (J slept in) trod up the hillside slowly to a temple with a 20-foot gold Buddha statue and sat cross-legged while the young monks performed a ceremony. We then went to another building with another statute and sat for another similar service and then quietly left when the guide thanked us for coming and then requested we leave as another ceremony started.

Breakfast at the Kyoto ryokan. You should have seen the dinner.


Toilet controls at the ryokan. Japanese toilets rock. Heated seats, several varieties of sprays, deodorizers...

We traveled again by bullet train the next day to an island named Miyajima and boarded a ferry for the short trip over. It's a sacred land where the emperors established temples and pagodas, and no one is allowed to be born or die there: the island has no maternity ward or cemeteries. The island is small and has a few ragged peaks, the tallest of which is about 535 meters high above the seaside temples. We had a nice stay at the ryokan there with another elaborate dinner, and I wandered around that evening when everything was closed but I did find a beer vending machine. There were lots of tame "wild" deer who would sidle up to you in hopes you'd have a snack to feed them. I didn't feed them but did pet a few. The deer look like whitetail but are a little lighter, shorter, and stockier with thicker fur. After a Japanese bath that evening and an elaborate Japanese breakfast (J opted for the western version), Ellen and I took a fast-paced hike to the top of the peak of the island named Mt. Misen. The tour brochures described it as a tough hike that takes about 90 minutes for 2.5km. I booked it up the path in 33 and got in an overdue workout.

Elusive beer vending machine. I found several, mostly in the smaller cities.


Five-story Pagoda


Deer at the top of Mount Misen. He was camped out in the trail looking for a handout.

Leaving Miyajima, we took a high-speed ferry to Hiroshima for the afternoon to see the peace park. I thought it might be depressing to view the city that was leveled by the a-bomb and had over 140,000 casualties, but it was uplifting. The afternoon sky was bright, the city was new and active, trees were everywhere, and there were touching exhibits in the park. There's a statue dedicated to a young girl named Sadoko who died of leukemia at age 10 several years after the bombing, and her wish was for peace and no more bombs. Japanese folklore is that folding 1000 origami cranes grants a wish, and she made it about 3/4 of the way before succumbing to the aftereffects of the explosion. Ellen and Jasper started a small project on the ship to fold cranes, and the effort went viral with students joining in to help. Much like Sadoko, we didn't reach 1000 cranes, but we had about one per student, and several students delivered the cranes. Jasper delivered a strand of cranes, too.


Jasper hangs cranes at the Hiroshima Peace Park. And yells at me for taking his picture.




Remains of the Prefecture building that was almost directly under the a-bomb as it detonated 600 meters above the city. The force spread out radiation, shock waves over 900mph, temperatures above 3000C, and caused massive destruction.

That day we were traveling inland and reaching Hiroshima, the ship had sailed from Yokohama and reached the port of Kobe. We stayed onboard that evening with a handful of students and faculty that had come back; the majority were still out in Japan. In the morning, we had most of a free day to make it back by 1800 ship time, so we went to Osaka, about an hour away via subway and special-rapid train. In Osaka, we visited the aquarium which may well be the best I've seen of my trips to aquariums (Baltimore, Seattle, Oregon, and various others). After dragging Jasper around the cities, temples, and historical sights we figured he'd enjoy an aquarium trip. The tanks were huge and full of fish; what really set the displays apart from others was that every fish, shark, manta ray, sea otter, sea lion, jellyfish, etc. was active and moving around and hardly anything was standing still.

Osaka also has a huge ferris wheel. Evidently, many of the Japanese cities have big ferris wheels, and I'm not sure why but it seems to me a contest of sorts to have the biggest one. Osaka's ferris wheel has signs proclaiming it the world's largest at 112 meters. We all took a ride and had a blast--it was slow-moving and took 15 minutes to make a single rotation. Jasper claims to be afraid of heights and he protested once we started moving, but we're pretty sure he liked it.

Sign at the queue at the Ferris Wheel. I think it means don't cross over the fence. The fence was kinda low.

 Very high up above Osaka.

Mmmm. Squid.

We rushed to make it back to the ship by 1800 ship time with about a half hour to spare. Ship time means you're through security and return your passport; if you're not onboard you get rapidly accumulating time penalties you have to sit onboard at the next port. Miss ship time by more than two hours, and the ship goes on to the next port without you, so it's a big deal. We cut it really close because Ellen's dad  discovered his wallet was missing when we tried boarding the last train to get to the ship, so J and I camped at the subway while Ellen and her dad went back to the last store we visited. The store clerk led them to the information desk where his wallet was, so we were late getting back to the ship but made it aboard with all our possessions intact. We also heard that a student lost his/her passport in a cab and the driver returned it to the ship. If you lose something abroad, try to do it in Japan.

We've been at sea today for about 12 hours and will be in Shanghai, China in another 36. Hope I didn't bore everyone with a long blog, but we did alot of traveling so I wasn't able to check emails or do any writing while inland.

Konichiwa for now.