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India was fun; It started out with taking an hour and half ride to Cochin Airport. Kamu (Grandma) had arranged for someone to pick me up, his name was Jacob! On the way to the airport, a truck hit a car, and us yeah sounds pretty casual…cause it is! We were on a one-way road and all of a sudden a truck decided he’s not waiting any longer, he powers through on the road and plows the side of our car. We get out and assess the damage and then a girl on her scooter doesn’t brake fast enough and then plows into the back of the car. Overall I think it was a perfect start to India!

KAMU!!

I made it to the airport and I was the first to get there out of all the semester at sea students. I checked in and printed my boarding pass, I turned around and then all of a sudden all of semester at sea was there! I sat around and talked to some of the locals that were going to be on my flight to brush up on my Hindi and Gujarati. Good conversations were had with a guy from Ahmedabad (city closest to my house). We boarded our flight and man, I really noticed people were starting to stare, I know I’m Indian, but I thought I would have blended in a lot better.

Casa De Patel

It was about 4-5 hours before I finally landed, first thing on my mind was tons of street food and what a better way to start that that pani puri and a sugar cane lassie? Roshan and Chirag (cousins) picked me up and took me out for dinner, shortly after we finally made it home. Right as I walked into my house, kamu was reading a book, I quickly threw my shoes off and ran over to her and touched her feet (necessity, pretty much a blessing). We talked for about an hour or so and then talked to my uncle for the rest of the time before everyone had decided to go to sleep.

My time in India was mostly spent walking around town, meeting old friends and making plenty of new ones. The minute I got home, everyone knew. Small town problems, everyone knows your name, they know your family and for someone that tries to keep a low profile, too many people knew me! We went and shopped a lot, got shoe’s & pocket squares for my suit, plenty of shirts and a lot more stuff that was pretty useless. Ate food at my uncle’s restaurant, it was called mirch masala, really great food, got a tour of the kitchen and met the staff.

Spending time with kamu and the family was great, I flew kites, went on to the farm and drove our tractor, saw peacocks and went to work with my cousin. I don’t know what he does for work other than point and yell. Its pretty much not even a job, I could do that from my house on the phone! We had one of his employees climb a tree for us to get coconuts and man they were delicious!

The last day at home we made our way to the airport where I was also supposed to meet some of my family on my moms side, they were ecstatic to see me, they brought tea and a breakfast hahaha, we ate it in front of the airport and said our good bye’s before I made my way inside and started back for cochin. After I printed my boarding pass and made it past security, I saw a fight break out between a passenger and a ticketing agent, Airport security just watched as these two duked it out, I was not surprised in any way that had happened, only in India!

I made it back to Cochin that night and went back to the ship to meet up with some friends before going out that night. After everyone had made it back we all went out for dinner at a restaurant called the rice boat, which was fabulous. The next day Kayla, Carly, Sam and I all went on a back Water River cruise in allepey. The scenery was astounding!

The tour lasted roughly around two hours, shortly after we went to get some henna done for the girls at a local’s house whose daughter was more than happy to draw on my friends with henna, It looked great! It was about that time to head back to the ship but Kayla needed to buy some sandals, I talked to the driver and told him to take us to a nice but cheap place to buy shoes. Her sandals cost 10 dollars, but they looked like they were worth a lot more, very stylish! We made it back to the ship and parted ways with our driver Shibu, what a great guy, we had met his family before making it back to the ship which was a great experience overall. India was a blast!

Next is Mauritius!!

-Raj Patel

They call it Myanmar…Or Burma?

Well, Burma was absolutely amazing! It started out with me being sick as a dog! I passed out on deck with a fever of 103 and pretty much started swabbing the decks after I knocked over a table full of water and other drinks. Not only that, there was a memorial service for one of the professors, on our voyage Professor Lancaster passed away in china and had a funeral service on the ship when his wife had returned in Singapore. I was never cleared to leave the ship but since I had already paid for the trip I just left! We were headed up to Mandalay, which was a province in Burma, It was absolutely and had an amazing time, and we drove up into the mountains and saw some very amazing sights!

After taking a short flight into Mandalay, which was about an hour and half and while we were at the airport we had no atm’s, Wi-Fi, or any technology whatsoever. Our boarding passes were pieces of paper that were stamped and we had received a sticker to place on our chest to inform the flight crew that we were on the flight manifest. The plane was not even a jet; it worked with propellers and literally had spiders and bugs crawling around.

We arrived into Mandalay airport, which wasn’t even in Mandalay, they just called it that! We had roughly a 3-hour bus ride to where we were going to stay, the scenery was astounding, and I wouldn’t have imagined seeing pagoda after pagoda literally every few hundred yards. I didn’t even need to go to bagan to see the land of a thought pagodas, they were literally everywhere on the side of the road! Our food any things were already paid for so every time we ate dinner, we paid in fat stacks of cash. No credit cards or atm’s only paid in thick wads of paper.

Our hotel was in the mountains, it was nice and cool, and fortunately it wasn’t humid at all! While everyone else in Yangon suffered from intense humidity we were drinking brews and eating food next to a warm campfire every night. The bus ride was mostly a one-way road all the time, if you looked to the right or left you pretty much starred death into the eyes! Cliffs on both sides with jacked rocks at the very bottom, it was quite scenic, but also really scary!

Our itinerary consisted of going to a school for the blind, it was very interesting to see how kids that were born blind still continue to live their daily lives. We sat for a while observing the kids and how they go about their daily routine, some kids would walk around with cell phones to make noise to let others know to get out of their way and some walk around knowing exactly where they are headed with out any guidance. We quietly observed as we saw them eat lunch, every meal they pray and thank the donors for the help in maintaining the school and giving them food to eat. On behalf of semester at sea we had donated 10,000 Kyats to the school to put towards new housing for the kids.

Shortly after, we went to a nun school; it was here when all the little girls had their heads shaved to become nuns! While we were at the schools the little girls would run around or away from us, they were very shy! Shortly after they all grouped up and sang us songs. It was like a battle between them and us! I don’t know at all what they were singing but when they were done we sand itsy bitsy spider and if you’re happy and you know it. We all had a great time; at the end of this we also donated more money on behalf of semester at sea to the nunnery school.

This entire time I was still really sick from my what ever I had, people definitely said I had yellow fever & dengue, some people just thought I had a stroke and yelled CPR!!! So not only was I sick but it didn’t help that I was traveling in the cold, with no jacket, not drinking any water, and definitely not eating enough, It started to get worse! For the last few days I powered through and tried to enjoy what was left of Burma. Since I’m very tired I'm gonna wrap this up by fast forwarding, we also went to a botanical garden, the longest bridge in the world, boated through some lakes and rivers and Also we ate plenty of local food, met a lot of monks and visited a lot of holy places. The people in Burma are very friendly and this is definitely a country I would love to come back to!!

Stay tuned for India!!

-Raj Patel

Singapore Slingers

Ahh, Good Ole Tiger City! The day started out with the Kayler and I, we decided that it was just gonna be the two us of roaming around Singapore! The plan was to go to the zoo, therefore Kayla had decided she would be my shadow, We arrived at the MRT (metro) and Kayla had just stopped talking for a while, she said that all she was gonna do is follow me and observe how I like to travel or some crap like that. After a while she began being herself again which made my day! Great sense of humor and always smiling no matter what, an amazing person to be around when ever possible! We made it to our stop on the metro and from there we had to take a 40-minute bus ride to the zoo!

There was never a dull moment, we had a blast! As soon as we made it to the zoo, it was about that time for lunch. Kayla and I had decided to eat a restaurant right outside of the entrance of the zoo, so here is where it gets interesting! Even though Singapore is known as the cuisine capital of the world, of all things Kayler gets porridge not knowing what it was, in the mean time I had ordered chicken curry with French bread. She dug into her porridge and said that it was great, while I knew what it was I thought I’d let her keep on eating this lovely dish, after a while she asked me what porridge was made of! I had the break it to her and tell her it was pretty much blended rice or oatmeal. I offered her some of my food but she’s quite the stubborn one, she refused and kept on going with the porridge! She later gave up and decided to try some of my food, which I was more than happy to give her, she ate two to three bites and said she was done.

I knew she was still hungry but after we ate, she refused to eat anything else so we made our way into the zoo, Kayler was really looking forward to seeing giraffes and while walking towards them she asked me what my favorite animal was and like any guy I was pretty much stumped! It took me 10 minutes to tell her I’d let her know by the time we left the zoo. We got to the giraffe’s and I never thought someone would be so ecstatic to see an animal we would see in South Africa at a Zoo in Singapore, but as long as she was happy, so was I. We took plenty of pictures at every animal and slowly moved on.

At the center of the zoo we went into some sort of green house where animals would come up to you and not be afraid at all. It was essentially like a petting zoo, you could get as close as you want to the animal but I don’t think petting was allowed! We then made it quickly out of the zoo and by the time we had reached the exit I told Kayla my favorite animal would have to be penguins, although we never made it there to see penguins, they just seemed to be the only animals that seemed awesome at the time!!

We left the zoo and I knew Kayler was starving, she was to stubborn to tell me so we went ahead and made our way into Ben & Jerry’s! I bought some really good Ice Cream and moved along in to the air conditioned KFC. Kayla and I had decided we would go watch a movie. We both wanted to see Safe Haven so we ended up trekking from one end of Singapore to the other to find out that it wasn’t going to release till the next day. Of all the movies playing in the theater we ended up watching a movie called Parker! Surprisingly it was a decent movie and Kayla and I got a kick out of it! So far the Valentines date I had owed Kayla was going great! Or that’s what I thought, who knows what was going through her head! After the movie we had decided to eat dinner at a hawker center! This was by far the cheapest food in Singapore and it was decent. Food cost around 4-6 dollars and the portions were huge! We ordered a big order of fried dumplings and a lot of noodles!

As soon as dinner was over we got some fruit juice and made our way back to the Metro, it was time to start heading back towards the ship! We had a long train ride back in to the city; we were probably the furthest out in Singapore than any other SAS kid. It took nearly 50 minutes to get back to the Marina Cruise Bay center and at that point I was in the mood for brews! We were in the middle of down town and I had just started walking in one direction and that was towards the marina sands bay hotel. I was ready to get a Tiger and possible a Singapore slinger. We walked for a good 30-45 minutes blasting the Jambox while walking down the streets of Singapore. As soon as we found a cab we got in and told the guy we needed to get to a bar. He was a native and he was really expressive as far as descriptions and talked in a very unbearable condescending way but at the same time it showed his love for Singapore!

We were dropped off at the Marina Sands Bay Shopping center; it was time for find some Tigers! We walked around the mall for what seems like hours until we came across a place called Café B! Up until this point my day was probably one of the best yet! Don’t know what Kayler was thinking but she seemed to be having a good time! We ordered 3 rounds of 750 ml Tigers and 2 Singapore Slingers right on the pier.

At 9 o clock there was a light show on the pier that no one had seen but the two of us, it was absolutely beautiful! Water, bubbles, and lights were everywhere it was amazing! The show had lasted around 30 minutes and in that time our minds were blown! I’d have to say the bill at the end of the night was out of this world but it being a valentine’s date it was well worth it! I had to be back on the ship by midnight since I had a field lab the next morning, while on the other hand sitting at the pier and drinking for Kayla was just the pre-game. From what I heard, she went out and partied like a boss!

The next morning I woke up and it was time to learn about the Japanese occupation of Singapore. My history class was amazing to begin with but after going to the places where the Japanese had attacked and where soldiers had stood it really made an impact about the way I view history. I was standing on land where blood had been spilt for the defense of Singapore and it’s people! Two professors were guiding us at the national university of Singapore. The day was pretty much an over glorified lecture but at the same time I had learnt a lot, by the end of the field lab we went to a cemetery where a fraction of the soldiers had been buried. As we arrived I had began scrolling through the names that had been chiseled on to the memorial and I had just then realized how many Indian immigrants were apart in defending Singapore and what it had meant. Although the field lab was absolutely eye opening it was quite depressing at the same time know that so many had died due to the Japanese ruthlessness. The two days we had in Singapore were absolutely amazing and now that I look back on it there’s not one thing I would change. Had the best time of my life those two days!

Next post is Burma!!

-Raj Patel

Back In Nam! And Cambodia!!

China was fun; it was time for a change in scenery in Vietnam and Cambodia! We set sail from Hong Kong that night just as the light show had started, what a great way to remember China!? We arrived in Vietnam in a short two days and the boys and I had planned on getting custom tailored suits. Little did we know that TET was in full effect the day we got there and all of the shops were closed L. We had our eyes on one specific tailor; the shop was called Cao Minh, their tailors from Hoi Ann were the finest tailors in Ho Chi Minh so we had to check it out. We arrive at the shop and look inside and it literally looks like a shop you would see in London or the states! We saw the suits they had on the display models and the hype was building immensely! We started walking to the door and there it was, a massive “closed for TET” sign.

We looked for another tailor for hours but had no luck at all, finally we gave up and ended up finding a tailor. The girl that was showing us the fabrics was really cute, she knew English really well and also at the same time she was hitting on all of us like no joke. We picked out our fabrics and suit styles and slowly began getting measurements, we told her we needed the suits before we left Vietnam and she said they would be done, so we trusted her!!

Matt and I were headed to Cambodia the next day so we had just dedicated our focus on that, as pumped as we were, we couldn’t stop worrying about how our suits would turn out. We had invested so much time into these outfits it was hard not to think about them. We slowly decided that we would shift all of our attention to Cambodia and leave the tailoring to the tailors.

We left for Cambodia on bus and it literally took forever, matt and I had just decided to kick back and relax but that never happened. It started out with a speed boat trip to the cu chi tunnels where we saw what had happened during the Vietnam war and how it had affected both the Vietnamese and Americans as far as guerilla warfare. We saw traps that just made you cringe, knowing that people had stepped into these traps and suffered immensely made me realize how fortunate we were for living in the 21’st century!

Shortly after we got back on the bus and began our 8-hour trip to Phom Phen where the depressing part of the trip began! It was also valentines day, I had bought a card for a girl I'd give it to on the ship, It ended up winding into the hands of a very beautiful girl named Kayla Hauser! (White tank on the left) Im sure I've talked about her in the previous posts and she's in some of the pictures in the past blogs, along with this one as well. I know going to a killing field wasn't going to win her heart over but it was the thought that counts! It started out with going to the killing fields where thousands of kids, parents and elders were killed. Pol Pot, a communist leader who thought that killing the richest and smartest people would benefit him in becoming the next leader of Cambodia bashed kid’s heads into trees and wacked their parents with bamboo sticks until they died! We saw a stupa with 17,000 skulls that were excavated from the killing fields. People were killed because one man thought that if he got rid of the smart and rich people, he would be able to control the rest of the population.

After spending most of my Valentines Day there with Kayla (the killing fields were too depressing so we had valentines day in Singapore which will be in the next post) Still had a great time with tons of ice cream and a great card I gave her! We moved on to Siem Reap where we went to Ankgor wat (temple where mortal combat was filmed) and Tomh Prah (where tomb rader was filmed). We had a great time, had plenty of brewski’s with my bro’s and had a yoga session during sunset at Ankgor Wat, Good Times! We made our way back to Vietnam ready to get our suits and we found out that they weren’t ready!

After making it back to Vietnam, we spent most of the day messing around and walking to museums! I never knew how much the U.S. had screwed up in Vietnam, Agent Orange was the first time I became aware of what the U.S. had done in Vietnam and was ashamed of everything that had happened. After walking through the museum I felt as if Vietnamese people hated that we were in their country after everything that had happened between our two nations!

After a while it was just too depressing to keep looking at the photo’s, matt and I had decided to leave and make our way back to our tailors to pick up our suits! When we got their, our tailor told us that our pants weren’t ready! Our ship was leaving in an hour and half and we had nothing to take with us, Matt and I left and began walking towards Cao Minh!

Matt and I decided we weren’t going to waste anymore tine since our suits weren’t ready so we went back to Cao Minh, They were open this time around so we got measured and suited! Those new suits will be shipped to India and I have no regrets, although if they don’t fit, that would be a different story!

We made our way back to the ship, they bribed us to come back early with BBQ so Matt and I couldn’t resist after easting pasta, pork and potatoes for the last month. After making it back to the ship, we ate like pigs, the ribs, chicken and mac and cheese were absolutely amazing! Shortly after we set sail for Singapore and that was it! That was Vietnam and Cambodia In a nutshell!

Until next time!

-Raj Patel

Mass Produced and Totally Fake!

The distance between Kobe Japan and Shanghai China was only two days! What were we going to do? Classes are turning into a joke as every few days we are getting off the ship into new countries. As we entered into Shanghai, the Skyline was quite astounding. Interestingly we navigated through the rivers of shanghai in roughly 4 hours before we reached the port right in front of pearl tower. Unfortunately, shanghai only lasted about 10 hours before we left! I had a field lab all day for my energy for the world class, the lab was amazing but I would have loved to go into shanghai and seen a few things! Oh well, just another excuse to come back! We got amazing jumping photos in front of the pear tower so I think I accomplished enough in the time I was there!

We went to the University of Shanghai, pretty much the MIT of the west, and we learned about power generation technologies in china. Most of china is powered by wind and water. Although china put’s out most of the pollution in the world, they also have the biggest population as well. After our lecture we went around to a few museums! The C.Y. Tung museum was quite interesting due to ISE (institute for shipboard education) originating from the man himself. He was a sea merchant who had donated a ship to start the Semester at Sea Program. Now it’s been 50 years since the program had started and SAS is on their 6th ship, the most advanced and fastest ship in the world. Due to the ship carrying mostly students and faculty and also circumnavigates the world, it was designed to out run almost anything. The MV Explorer is fast enough to get away from pirates and other things in the middle of the ocean but lets not think about that since this ship also doesn’t have any weapons other than water cannons.

The rest of the day we went to a rocket museum, walked around a little and made our way back to the ship to prepare to leave for Beijing! As we got back to the ship, Matt (one of my roommate’s) and I had packed our bags and gotten ready to leave. Matt is quite the talker so leaving on time didn’t happen, we also tired to find a train that would take us to the airport but no one spoke English to give us directions! After a good half hour looking for the metro and ATM we finally decided to take a cab and head on to the airport. Now this is where everything get’s hairy! We were the first ones to arrive at the airport and soon after Lisa and Phil showed their lovely faces as well. We ate dinner and slowly started to make our way to the gate but we got side tracked by a candy stand in the middle of the airport! Lisa and I got ripped off on gummy bears and ended up paying roughly 18 dollars for a 1-pound bag! Lisa and Phil had decided to go to the gate and get ready for boarding while Matt and I decided we weren’t quite ready to go over there. Matt and I only had one thing on our mind and that was SHOTS! We made our way into what was called a teahouse but instead of tea, it housed tons of alcohol. We sat down and ordered 3 shots each, 1 Chivas regal, and 2 Johnny walker red label! Alcohol was cheaper than the gummy bears, it was a joke! It took nearly 20 or so minutes to get our drinks and after we had drank them we realized the waitress had messed up our bill, she added two more shots to our bill so it only made sense to have her bring two more shots! I looked at my watch and saw we only had 6 minutes to get on the plane!

We dropped the cash and started to run! America is being put to shame as we sprint through airports, train stations and ferries! We hop on a rolling escalator to get to the gate quicker and BAM! Two guys are yelling at us screaming “Beijing”!!! We just watched them as we strolled along the escalator heading to the gate. As we jumped off we turned around and these guys were running towards us! We stopped to wait for them and as they approached us out of breath they told us our gate door had closed and we had missed our flight! Matt and I just glared at each other and grinned! We started making excuses to the gentleman saying that our cab had gotten lost and he started taking us to the wrong airport. Our poor excuses worked fortunately and we had gotten on the next flight to Beijing! We were traveling with 7 other people and they must have been wondering what was going on and why we hadn’t gotten on the plane. I know Lisa and Phil knew what happened and must of told everyone what we had been up to!

Matt and I had walked around for a while and finally decided to park it right next to our gate, we got on the Internet and there it was…the great super firewall of china! No Facebook, half of Google was blocked, and Wikipedia was somewhat non-existent. We found out the equivalent of Facebook, which is called renren and decided we would make a page and just mess around. Little did we know that renren does an extensive background check as to where you went to school , what your friends names are and whether your name is real or not. Mattelrajish was obviously not a real name and the system shut us down! As we boarded our flight matt and I had decided we would record our take off and landing with his GoPro camera! We had adhesive strips so we stuck the camera above the window and as it hung there matt tried to cover it up using his hoodie. There was a little Asian man staring at us at our 11 o clock and what must have been running through his mind is unknown, but what else would an Asian man think when there is a brown man with a beard and a white kid sticking a device to a window on an airplane? And yes we were quite the obnoxious kids on the plane, making jokes and being loud!

As we landed, we had no gangway, we took the stairs down, and you can smell the pollution in the air. Had we arrived in Beijing 2 day’s prior, visibility was down to three feet at sea level. We worked our way into a transport bus that was over crowded, people were grabbing my ass and other places which was very uncomfortable. As we got off the bus we made our way into the terminal and there was our tour guide holding up a sign that said “Raj Patel” we waved and smiled, as we introduced our selves we found out that our friends stayed at the airport instead of going to the hostel. I had emailed Flora (tour guide) that we had missed our flight so she insisted on waiting on matt and I, the rest of the night no one really spoke to us haha I wonder why.

The next morning we all got up, some of us ate breakfast and soon after we met with Flora and began our day. It started out with going to see the Forbidden City and man was it cold! As we got closer and closer, you could see the life-sized portrait of Mao (Chinese figure head) (total communist). Street vendors started to approach us with post cards, communist hats, and fake north face gloves. Of course me being me, I bought a panda hat instead of gloves…sacrificed warmth for a panda hat, total fail! As we made our way into the city, we found out it was closed due to weather so we did the next best thing, LUNCH! We feasted, tons of food and it was all sooo good. I don’t really remember everything we had but what ever it was it totally hit the spot! Right after lunch we all went to go see panda’s (in flora’s case it was pander’s since she couldn’t pronounce a’s, therefore Kayla was known as kayler, coca cola was coca coler etc). These panda’s we saw were quite amusing, one of them was just chilling, eating his/her bamboo and then all of a sudden passed out cold! About 2-3 minutes later it wakes back up and then decided to climb a tree where it picks out a spot to take an epic shit from above! Right after that he/she climbs down and rubs it’s but against the tree multiple times and then runs away. We were all-speechless, I was just clicking away on my camera getting some candid shots of this amazing animal, we all had a good laugh and continued on to the summer palace.

The summer palace its definitely a tourist destination if anyone ever decides to go to china! My goal was to get some sick jumping pictures from every port on our itinerary, so right as we start jumping, tons of Chinese photographers turned into paparazzi and started to take pictures with us, some of them even joined in. My one idea turned into a nightmare, I couldn’t even get a decent picture! Time to fast forward a little, if I cover everything I won’t have stories to tell when I get back home!

I got my jumping picture on the great wall, I didn’t get to toboggan down because of snow, we saw the bird’s nest and the water cube and all in all Beijing was a success without any flaws or regrets! We went to an acrobat show that was absolutely amazing, we saw people move in ways people should not be moving!

Now our trip to Hong Kong was absolutely horrendous. It started out being delayed almost two hours with Air China taxiing to the runway. As we took off the food onboard was disgusting, tasted like cardboard. They had some sort of desert type of Jell-O with ham in the middle, made me gag a little! We had landed around mid night and Phil, Matt and I had decided we would slum it at the sketchiest hostel in Hong Kong, we didn’t know where it was or what it was called but we just decided to wing it. As we took the train from the airport into Kowloon, we had realized that the train actually cost money and wasn’t free at all. It cost us7 dollars for a 15 minutes ride…it was a joke! We were pulling money out of an ATM and a woman approached us. Right as I saw her I thought she was literally cracked out of her mind. She didn’t know any English and she had lost her credit card, passport and had no money at all. Phil came over and I had told him that this girl was on crack, Phil bends over and looks under her nose and says “hey, did you know she has cocaine on her nose”. It was a bad time to laugh, but yes it did happen. Matt in the mean time was in the bathroom, he came running back and right as we told him he started laughing as if this were all a joke, unfortunately it wasn’t. We tried to help this girl but all she said was she had no card, and then she asked us if we had it. That’s when we got the queue to leave! What a great start to our evening? We planned on slumming it and so far it was a success!

We found a cab outside of the station and told him we needed to get to the Kung Ching Mansion. He said “are you sure”. Like that wasn’t enough for us to back out, but no, we had that “we are men” mentality and decided to go! As we got their an Indian man approached us asking if we needed a place to stay, we didn’t even make it out of the cab and Matt said “uhhhh YEAHHHHHH!” At least another 15-20 Indian males were staring us down on our way into this super sketch hostel. Apparently matt had gotten us acquainted with “sunny” the hotel manager or what ever you would call him and now we were down to first names like we were all best friends. We walked into what is supposed to be a 3-man elevator with 6 people; it was Matt, Phil and I with 3 Indians cramped up inside of this death trap. The hostel was on the 16th floor of a hi-rise as if that wasn’t bad enough.

Here was are in this elevator, matt is giving sunny our information thinking he was diffusing the situation while Phil and I were contemplating on what we needed to do in order for us to get out alive. A bigger guy was standing behind me, I had my back pack on so I didn’t know what was going on back there but I had a thought “ well there goes my kidney’s…Hong Kong black market will definitely love these!” We made it to the 16th floor alive and sunny showed us our room, which was absolutely filthy! Matt had a pillow on his bed that someone recently puked on and Phil and I decided we would share the other bed. There was one sheet covering the mattress, it was moist so we ripped it off along with the pillows and then we just started talking about how shady everything so far had been. Phil was having thoughts about taking sonny’s neck and driving it into the elevator doors had he moved an inch, and I was just thinking about elbowing sunny while turning around and throwing a jab to his adam’s apple. The door was an entire piece of steel with no peephole and the only way out was the way we came in or the window 16 floors up, with no fire escape. We slept for roughly 5ish hours and high tailed it out of there, didn’t even say good-bye! We went back to the ship, took showers and started out for Hong Kong.

This was the longest blog post yet and I am getting very tired of typing, just look at my pictures and I’m sure you’ll find the word’s yourself J.

Next post is Vietnam and Cambodia!!

-Raj Patel

Sake, Steak and Sumo's

What a storm! We just lived through 25-35 foot swells for the past two-ish days! After sailing in the open sea’s for roughly ten days straight we finally arrived to Yokohama. Right as we arrived, we had no time at all to see the city; we went straight to the metro and made our way into Tokyo to make it in time for the Sumo World Championship. Talk about a language barrier from hell. The only words I knew where Konichiwa (hello) shumi masen (excuse me) aregato (thank you) and that got us nowhere! Figuring out the metro when no one knows English was quite the challenge but once we got the hang of it, we navigated Tokyo like we owned the place. Food was absolutely amazing everywhere we went to eat, although everything we ate was nowhere near being authentic! After arriving at a new restaurant every meal we figure it’s all Japanese but no, its Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai food, and the everyday street food that all of us Americans are so accustomed to!

The sumo championship was amazing; we saw the last six fights and stayed for the award ceremony, which seemed to have lasted for ages! For someone who just won the super bowl of his sport, this man maintained composure and showed no excitement at all. He was given roughly 20-25 trophies which some weren’t even trophies! He was handed statues of cow’s, corona beer pictures, pots and pans…pretty much the usual household utensils. The fight was inconveniently located, as we had to go from one end of Tokyo to the other side in less than 30 minutes to make it on time for the final match. There were six of us running down the narrow halls of the Tokyo metro making the United States look terrible. We were being culturally insensitive as we pushed people out of the way and screamed franticly! I’m sure some of these Japanese citizens didn’t think very highly of us after their brief encounter with SAS kids. We went out for dinner searching for sushi and ended up eating Chinese food in japan, pretty much pre-gamed for what was to come. Great food, although we ate like a traditional family with the spinning glass at the center of the table. Food was absolutely delicious, loved the people I was with and the times we had. We woke up the next morning and split up into groups, some went shopping in Shibuya, which has the busiest crosswalk in the world and also the shopping attractions.

After the fight we had to go all the way back where we came from, and that was far! It was super cold and all of us wanted coffee and hot chocolate and guess what!? A vending machine that vends Hot Coffee and Hot Chocolate in a CAN that is HOT and ready to drink all for just a dollar. The hot chocolate I had bought was absolutely astounding! Through out the rest of my time in Japan, little did I know that one can of hot chocolate was one of a kind and I would never see it again L.

After we got back to our hotel we all decided to go out and check out the Tokyo nightlife, and yes it was a whole lot better than Hilo. To tell you the truth I can’t really remember much of it. I asked my friends while walking back to the hotel if they were ready to start Semester at Sea and how they like San Diego. Of course the next morning I come to find out I made a complete ass of my self!

Lisa, Julia, Phil and I decided we wanted to rent bikes and ride around the imperial palace. Our second day in Tokyo was very exciting; we rented bicycles for 5 dollars and rode around the emperor’s palace. The scenery was quite nice, it was a cool, clear day and plenty of things to see along the biking route.. Riding bikes was one thing, riding bikes while trying not to hit a cluster of people was a whole different ball game! After biking for most of the day we decided to go out again once more at night and that also did not end well for me, those stories will be for another day for sure!

Our time in Tokyo was amazing; it was time to head to Kobe! We hopped on the Shinkansen (high speed bullet train) and it was a very fun 3 ½ hour ride. Along the way we got a great view of Mt. Fuji and tons of snow, and I mean TONS! After arriving in Kobe we checked into our hotel and began to unwind. Dinner was very interesting, we went to a steakhouse called steak land, it was a Chinese restaurant that served Kobe steaks, our chef’s was Italian and his name was Febreeze! The steak on the other had was absolutely amazing, no chewing required! The next day I decided to solo Kobe by my self, I went back to the ship to drop off my bags at the ship and on the way back I found my self in front of a sake museum. Of course I didn’t come to japan to just walk around so I went in! There were plenty of Lifelong learners in the museum that were taste testing the sake so I decided to join in. They had all sorts of flavors; plum, orange, peach, you name it and they had it! After having quite a bit I started walking towards the hotel and met some SAS kids. They said they tried to climb Mt. Rokku and said it was impossible.

Of course me not being in my right mind had to go and say “nothing is impossible”! I took the train to the mountain and just glared at it for a good 5 minutes and then just started to climb, I mean literally scale! Through trees and shrubs, jagged rocks and steep cliffs, little did I know there was an actual trail roughly 500 ft to the right of me. As I summited the mountain after 3 or so hours, I somewhat sobered up and took in the views. You could literally see both Kyoto and Kobe from the very top. I went into a gift shop and decided to buy some chocolate fondue for my friends for when I return to the hotel. On the way down is when shit went south, Literally! I was walking down the actual path, which was quite steep, I twisted my ankle and just had the best time making it down the mountain. I made it back to the hotel and I was the last one to show up. I soaked my feet in the hot tub for roughly an hour and called it a night. In my opinion I thought it was a pretty successful day. Didn’t have to deal with anyone else but me!

The next day I had a field lab with my field lab with my psychology class in Kyoto where we went to meditate with a Zen Priest. I have to say it was amazing! We meditated for roughly 20 minutes and in that time most of the class fell asleep which is what we were aiming for. During mediation, one tries to find inner peace by clearing ones thoughts and attempting to relax the body. For the longest time I thought there was no way I can sit there for that long with out moving, or not thinking about anything but it ended up being very easy. We ended with a traditional tea ceremony with the priest along with a short Q&A about his daily life, which was quite interesting.

Anyways, that’s Japan for me guys!

Stay Tuned for China!

25-Hour Days

Hilo was a bundle of joy! The amount of things we had accomplished in such little time was incredible. It all started out pretty late with car rental trouble, which led to lots of lying, pretending to be married, having an adopted sister and much more! After failing to get a car, the agency recommended a tour company, she said for 30 dollars they’ll take us everywhere, and she meant EVERYWHERE! So here we are, sitting outside the car rental place and here comes this van, absolutely beat to hell, doors don’t close, seat belts are far from being functional and the guide was quite a character. Her name was Teresa; she was in her mid 50’s or so but had the mind of a college kid! She tried to get us to go skinny-dipping in the Hot Ponds, she has a friend that grows pot; she looked baked out of her mind and was all around a pretty nice person!

The tour started out with a trip to Safe Way for subs, and snacks, then we went on to see some lava fields, waterfalls, volcanic beaches, and chowed down some legit authentic Hawaiian food. Unfortunately most of the time it was raining but every minute we stepped outside of the van it stopped. Later that night we went back to ship, showered down and went out to experience the Hawaiian “night life”! I’ll tell you first hand that Hilo is not the place to go out at all, super dead, and absolutely no fun…Semester at Sea knew what would have happened if we spent the night in Honolulu. Although 30 or so kids did get their license taken at a local bar which was quite hilarious, it surprises me that of all the places we are going to visit they will have to explain to mommy and daddy why they messed up in the United States!

Phil and I woke up the next morning and went out to the market, did some shopping and came back with some extraordinary souvenirs! I bought a ukulele; a mariachi band will be made on the MV Explorer before the end of the trip! Apparently after walking around downtown Hilo, we decided to go to Richardson beach where everything was going down! Phil and I decided to go check it out, we were roughly 6-7 miles away and the epic walk began! This right here was the highlight of my trip so far, after walking 1-2 miles I just decided it was enough and stuck out my thumb hoping for a ride to the beach. Little did I know the next 15 minutes were going to be the scariest of both of our lives! So two surfer dudes pulled over and offered us a ride, we got up to their passenger window and they just had the most disgusting truck ever. There were also some very vulgar pictures on the dashboard. We were so tired of walking, Phil and I just decided to get in their truck bed and get to the beach. The driver started out offering coconut candy, cocaine, marijuana, and heroine.

We kindly declined all of the above, Phil almost took some of the coconut candy and I just gave him the death stare and screamed NoooooooooooooooOOO!! So he also kindly declined. So here we are on the back on someone’s truck and we think we are headed to the beach, roughly 2-3 minutes into the ride, the driver takes a detour. Phil and I just glared at each other and pretty much embraced the fact that these two guys were gonna rob us and kill us. We started speeding up to roughly 70-80 mph and both of us are in the back of a pick up truck sitting on tire wells. Had it not been for Phil, I would not be writing this post! Thanks Bro!! It was about 5 minutes and the driver slammed on the brakes like an asshole and Phil and I flew into the rear windshield, he asked us “where you going guys”? We told him yet again we needed to get to the beach. He pulled into a driveway that just so happened to be his house, It looked really sketch, Phil and I just stared at each other knowing that this would be our last moments alive. Why were we going to get robbed and killed in Hawaii? We would have been known as the two screw-ups on the MV Explorer. Dying in America would have been a joke. We jumped out of the truck and booked it right to the beach, barely even said bye! The rest of the day was uneventful, as what we had just lived through could not be matched with anything else in anyway. Hawaii was a tease!

Land sickness was just starting to settle in and here we are getting back on this BOAT. I refuse to call it a ship when you can’t even walk straight to class or get a cardio work out going to dinner. It was back to pasta, pork, and potatoes, and a good yelling from Tom Jelke. It was a monologue, not a dialogue. Apparently 30-40 kids had their licenses taken at a local bar. Yes I was there but right as a girl said the words Call and Cops we were outta there! We sailed for Honolulu that evening to refuel, since it wasn’t a scheduled stop we spent 2 days on the ship just staring at Diamond Head. The captain had decided to leave Hawaii a day later due to severe storms in the pacific, after taking a massive detour and 3000 gallons of fuel later we hit the perfect storm. So much fun, from what I heard, there were 30 ft waves and our boat was rocking all over the place. A girl in my psychology class was launched across the room, and yes we still had class. Life onboard was somewhat of a drag being cooped up in a ship, not having the option to see different scenery for days on end was growing on everyone. I along with 600 college students never lived January 21st 2013. Martin Luther King Day was non-existent; as we crossed the International Date Line a day in my life never happened! 25-hour days became routine as every night we set our clocks back an hour, in theory it sounded amazing! Living an extra hour got old very quick! I have picked up morning yoga as a new hobby. There’s nothing better than seeing the sunrise, trying to stay balanced and finding inner peace while the boat sways from side to side. I would write more but I am too tired! Hope everyone is doing well back home!!

Raj Patel